CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

Nativization of English Loanwords in Mandarin

A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics, General.

By Wenyi Yu

May 2018 The graduate project of Wenyi Yu is approved:

______Dr. David Medeiros Date

______Dr. Kenneth Luna Date

______Dr. Christina Scholten, Chair Date

California State University, Northridge

ii Table of Contents

Signature Page ii

Abstract iv

1.Introduction 1

2. Loanword phonology 2

3. A Comparison of Mandarin and Cantonese Syllable Structure 4

3.1 Phonemic Inventory 4

3.2 Basic syllable structure 5

3.3 Possible differences in loanword adaptation 6

4. Yip’s Observations for Cantonese Loanword Phonology 7

4.1 Deletion 7

4.2 Epenthesis 8

4.3 Discussion 10

5. How does this work in Mandarin? 11

5.1 Prediction 11

5.2 Evaluation of application in Mandarin 11

5.3 The different phenomenon in Mandarin regarding nasal /m/ 14

6. Conclusion 16

References 17

Abstract

Nativization of English Loanwords in Mandarin

By

Wenyi Yu

Master of Arts in Linguistics, General

Previous studies have been done regarding the loanword phonology pattern in Cantonese. Some systematic change and also the constraints rankings have been suggested by the early studies in Cantonese. The theories of the two-level process in loanword (Silverman, 1992) and the loanword phonology change in the operative level (Yip, 1993) in Cantonese have a significant influence on loanword phonology studies in Chinese. The present study focuses on an evaluation of applying the rules suggested by Yip in Cantonese to Mandarin, and make some justification upon the pattern restrictions. Also, the syllable-final /m/ adaptation process due to the difference between the options for coda in Cantonese and Mandarin has been addressed. This paper would predict to what extent that the rules are going to be practicable to Mandarin based on the differences between Cantonese and Mandarin in syllable structures and phonology. This could reveal some differences in the loanword adaptation preferences other than syllable structure level only between the two dialects of Chinese. The results show that two out of six patterns observed in Cantonese would also be available for Mandarin. Differences are that the liquid in a consonant cluster is mostly deleted Cantonese but preserved in Mandarin. Meanwhile, the syllable-final liquids are usually preserved in Cantonese but they got deleted in Mandarin. The epenthesis also usually happens after fricatives and affricates at unsyllabifiable positions such as word-final position. However, due to the differences between the syllable structure in the coda part of Cantonese and Mandarin, also the limitation of sound choice for coda in Mandarin, the adaptation process of epenthesis and deletion is happening in the coda position are very different regarding liquids. The syllable-final /m/ are preserved in Mandarin by feature change or epenthesis. This study provides a point of view to evaluate and predict the rule change in loanword phonology between two similar dialects. This might also provide some insight for future research to discover the different phonology system and preference of this two dialects.

iv

1. Introduction This paper aims at talking about the English loanwords of Mandarin Chinese. As English becomes the international language, some of the English words are adapted into Mandarin Chinese as part of the vocabulary in Chinese. There are several issues regarding loanwords in Mandarin. For instance, tone and stress pattern adaptations. Stress in English words would assign the tones for Cantonese Chinese (Silverman 1992), but for this paper, I will only focus on the segmental level, not the suprasegmental elements such as stress and intonation. One interesting issue regarding English loanwords in Mandarin is that some of the loanwords go through a translation process because of the different orthography system of English and Mandarin Chinese. English is an alphabetic language and Chinese is a hieroglyphic language that uses characters. Characters in Chinese have some literal meaning, therefore some of the loanwords might not strictly follow the phonological adaptation. Instead, one character that represents the similar sound and similar meaning would be chosen as the loanword interpretation. This is an interesting phenomenon described as semantic loan (Tian 2012), but this is not the topic and goal of this research paper. The aim of this paper is to discuss the nativization process for Mandarin words in phonological and phonetic aspects. This paper applies the nativization pattern conducted for Cantonese by Yip on Mandarin based on the data collected1. This paper evaluates to what extent the model proposed by Yip can be applied to Mandarin, and might suggest some modifications for the pattern to be able to apply for Mandarin. Cantonese and Mandarin are both major dialects of Chinese, but they still have different syllable structures. This paper will focus on the differences of syllable structure and the adaptation process of syllable structure only.

1 The data archived from other sources will be cited, otherwise the data here in this paper is collected or translated based on my native speaker knowledge of Mandarin Chinese.

1

2. Loanword phonology Loanword phonology describes the phonological change of the sound segments from the original language to the target language. What exactly happens in adaptation of loanwords? Is it all perceptual or perception is needed as part of the process? Perceptual means that some researchers hold the view that the input is phonetic, and the adaptation is based solely on perceptions. While another point of view is that perception is part of the process of adaptation, there is a further step after the perceptual level. Silverman (1992) described what happens when words nativize in Cantonese. Silverman suggests that there are two levels of processing, the first level is the PERCEPTUAL LEVEL, and the second is the OPERATIVE LEVEL. The perpetual level refers to the process of what does the native speaker ‘hear’ from the loanwords, which means how does the word get interpreted in the native phonological system. The operative level refers to a process that the input sounds are operated by the phonological process, such as epenthesis or deletion based on the syllable structure restriction. These repairing strategies are used to avoid the violation of the rules or phonological structures of the target language (Silverman 1992). This means that the actual input is not simply the original sounds from the language that is heard. The sounds primarily go through the perception of the target/native language, they entered the target language chart by changing some features to match the closest existing sound in the phonemic inventory, then they are processed according to the rules of the target language with the syllable structure constraints (Yip, 1993). The input is not simply speech sounds because there are a lot of dialects of English, which could also result in different input. For example, the British English would drop the final /r/ sound as suggested by Yip (1993); hence the input for a word with a final /r/ sound from American English and British English could lead to different output results. For the loanwords, one major concern in Chinese is that the orthography system is different from English. As mentioned before, the characters contain certain meaning, thus loanwords in Chinese would not only go through a phonology adaptation, but would also get assigned a proper character that could be written and recognized, perhaps even represented in the meaning. Some of the loanwords have a combination of the phonology loan and semantic loan, which means the character represents the similar sounds and the same meaning. For example, ‘talk show’ in English would be ‘tuo kou xiu’ in Mandarin,

2

which means ‘quickly come out of the lip performance’. However, there are also times when a word gets ‘translated’ into the native language and completely loses the original pronunciation. This paper only looks at the words that are pure phonological loan by looking at common nouns and proper nouns to avoid the semantic loan situation. Another issue is raised that whether we need specific rules for adaptation of the loanwords. For the rule-based framework, phonology is seen as the ‘grammar’ of speech sounds, and for a ‘grammar’ we would have sets of categories for the speech sounds, and various rules to apply based on the features of the natural sound group or different categories. Some researchers might argue that we need some specific rules for loanwords nativization based on this reason. However, Yip is using the OPTIMALITY THEORY here for Cantonese loanword phonology, there is no need to construct special rules. Optimality Theory does not require specific rules for loanwords, because the loanwords from other languages serve as the ‘wug’ to test the native language phonological system. The phonology structure is the same for the native words and the loanwords. The process of nativization reveals the actual phonological structure of the native language. (Yip, 1993). In OT, there is no rules, only the universal constraints and the constraint rankings that vary from different languages (Kager 1999). The constraints rankings of the native language are evaluated by the loanwords. For this paper, I will evaluate the capability of applying the patterns that Yip observed from Cantonese to Mandarin. I will also try to point out the differences and make some justifications to make those patterns be able to apply to Mandarin. Cantonese and Mandarin are both widely used, but Mandarin has a wider range of speakers and area, compared to Cantonese which is the native language around Guangdong and Hong Kong; Cantonese also has a smaller area of use. There are some similarities and differences of these two languages, hence the constraint ranking for Cantonese might work for Mandarin as well if some minor adjustments are made. The difference is that Mandarin is more restricted in coda position, which is one of the focus of this paper.

3

3. A Comparison of Mandarin and Cantonese Syllable Structure

3.1 Phonemic Inventory The phonemic inventory is shown in the tables below. 2 TABLE 1 The consonants chart of Mandarin Chinese bilabial Labial dental Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Retroflex Velar

-

Stop p pʰ t tʰ k kʰ fricatives f s ʂ ʐ x Affricates ͡ts ͡tsʰ ͡ʈʂ ͡ʈʂʰ

Nasals m n ŋ

Lateral l approximants Glides (ɥ) j w (semi-vowel) (w) (ɥ) TABLE 2 The consonants chart of Cantonese Chinese (from Yip) Stop(Plain) p t ts k kʷ Stop(aspirated) pʰ tʰ tsʰ kʰ Kʷʰ Fricatives f s h Nasals m n ŋ Liquid l Glides j w

THE SIMILARITY The similarity of Cantonese and Mandarin is the phonemic inventory for the consonants, as shown in the charts above. Mandarin and Cantonese have almost the same phonemic inventory for consonants and glides. Mandarin and Cantonese also have some of the vowels in same. The vowels in Mandarin are /i/ /u/ /y/ /ə/ /a/; and all these vowels exist in Cantonese. The vowels in Cantonese are /i/ /u/ /y/ /e/ /o/ /a/.

THE DIFFERENCES As mentioned above, the consonants are almost the same, but each language has some unique sounds that do not exist in the other. For example, Cantonese

2 When the sounds appear in pairs, the left one is voiceless, the right one is voiced.

4

has /kʷ/ and /kʷʰ/, but those two sounds do not exist in Mandarin. Mandarin has the glide /ɥ/ but Cantonese does not have it. When talking about vowels, there are more cardinal vowels in Cantonese than Mandarin. The vowels /o/ and /e/ only exist in Cantonese. However, Mandarin allows two apical vowels /z/ and /ʐ/ only after the retroflex sound /ʈʂ//ʈʂʰ//ʂ//ʐ/. Another difference is that Mandarin accepts diphthongs but Cantonese does not. 3.2 Basic syllable structure

CHINESE SYLLABLE STRUCTURE IN GENERAL. According to Duanmu, the maximal syllable structure in Chinese is CGVX. Here the option for G and X varies for Mandarin and Cantonese (2011). The C here stands for consonants excluding the glides, which are actually the semi-vowels from the consonant charts. The G here stands for glides only. He also argues that the CG at the onset position is not the cluster, it is actually a consonant with a secondary articulation. One major reason is that the CG sounds very different from CG. For example, sound ‘sway’ in English is /swei/, and the word ‘age’ in Mandarin Chinese is /sʷei/. The second important argument is that the existence of G in Mandarin does not make a significant difference of syllable length, the CVX and CGVX showed the similar duration. This argument is also supported by the study of Wu and Kenstowicz (2015: 87). In this case, the syllable structure in Chinese is CVX or CGVX. At the same time, based on the G-spreading phenomenon described by Duanmu, which “requires a high nuclear vowel to spread to the onset”. He claimed that the contrast between the V and GV are lost when the G is the corresponding glides with the high vowel (2007). Based on that, we might say that sometimes the high vowels /i/ /u/ and /y/ can also serve the function as a G when the syllable structure is CVV and the first vowel here is the high vowel. One special feature of Chinese syllable structure is that the onset is optional. This feature applies to both Mandarin and Cantonese. For example, there is a word ‘an’ (/an/) in Mandarin which means ‘safe’.

CANTONESE. As stated by Yip, the Cantonese syllable is maximally CVC with only two syllabic nasals /m/ and /ŋ/. Combined with the information mentioned above, the maximal Cantonese syllable is CGVX or CVX, here CG or C works as onset; V is a vowel and functions as the nucleus; X here can be the vowel /i/ or /u/ or nasals or unaspirated stops from the consonant inventory. The two glides in Cantonese can occur separately

5

without C. But only the glide /w/ can co-occur with the C in the onset node (Duanmu, 2011). Yip suggested that the coda in Cantonese can be glides. Here we can see that the two vowels allowed here correspond with the two glides in Cantonese, which are /ɥ/ and /w/. So, we can apply the observation from Duanmu of G-spreading here and say the nucleus in Cantonese can be a single vowel or diphthong, and coda can be nasals or unaspirated stops from the inventory .

MANDARIN. The Mandarin syllable structure is almost the same as Cantonese. The differences are the options for the different slots. Based on the previous information by Duanmu, the maximum syllable can be CGVX or CVX. Here X can be either a vowel or a consonant, which means that diphthongs are allowed in Mandarin. However, the consonant choices here in X slot are more limited compared to Cantonese, which is restricted to two nasal sounds, /n/ and /ŋ/. Another thing to mention is that the nasal /ŋ/ cannot be used as onset, and the nasal/m/ cannot be used as coda, and these two things are allowed in Cantonese. 3.3 Possible differences in loanword adaptation As stated in the previous comparison, we can see that the basic phonemic inventory and the syllable structure of Cantonese and Mandarin are very similar. The loanword process patterns for the onset in Cantonese is also be similar to Mandarin. The biggest difference is the option for the coda. The options for coda in English are almost all the consonants, including stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, and liquids. Coda in Cantonese can only be nasals and unaspirated stops, which eliminates a lot of consonants from English. When it comes to Mandarin, there were only two nasals allowed. This would further increase the process of loanword adaptation, either deletion or epenthesis, in word-final or syllable- final position to nativize the English word.

6

4. Yip’s Observations for Cantonese Loanword Phonology The observation regarding Cantonese loanword phonology from Yip in this study largely focuses on the consonants. The changing of consonants is easier to detect than vowel change, hence this observation could clearly show the perception of the native language speakers regarding the foreign sounds. There are three types of repairing strategies used in Cantonese loanword from English, feature change, deletion, and epenthesis. Feature change means that the sound is preserved by some feature changing, such as devoicing or a change in the place of articulation, for example, /r/ becomes /l/. Yip assume that this feature change is because the Cantonese speakers do not detect the differences between the English sound and the Cantonese sound. This part of change is more in the perception level rather than operative level due to the different phonemic inventory of Cantonese and English. The focus of this paper is on the operative level; hence the feature change part will not be discussed in detail. 4.1 Deletion Based on Yip’s observation, there are two major types of consonant deletion. (1) Final stops after another consonant are deleted. Yip argues that this is because the word-final stops are hard to detect from the English input. For example, the English pronunciation for band and ban are very close. Sometimes English speakers would need the context clue to distinguish between these two words. This is the process from the input, which falls under the perceptual level. In this case, since the input itself doesn’t contain the word-final stop, these type of sounds would not appear in the perception of Cantonese speakers. (2) When liquids that are the in second half of an onset cluster, they are deleted only when the output can maintain at least two syllables. Some examples are as follows. (3) 3a. floorshow /fo sow/ b. freezer /fi sa/ c. place /pei si/ d. strawberry /si tʰaw pe ley/

3 All the data sets in this section are retrieved from Yip 1993.

7

In this set of data, the liquid /l/ or /r/ were both deleted. However, in the word ‘cream’, the Cantonese version is /kei lim/, the liquid here is preserved with some feature change. This phenomenon will be discussed below in the epenthesis section. The purpose of mentioning this example is to illustrate the idea that the liquid can be detected and perceived by Cantonese speakers, it has been processed to be deleted instead of not being identified at all. According to Yip, the reason for his kind of deletion is because the liquid is not as salient as the other consonants. In this case, the first half of the consonant cluster. As shown in the examples above, the first half of the consonants are all stops or fricatives; the liquids after them in the consonant clusters were deleted, not only because Chinese does not allow consonant clusters, but also because the liquids are not as salient as the obstruents. In other words, the lower a sound is in the sonority hierarchy, the more salient it is. 4.2 Epenthesis Based on the discussion about the preservation of a more salient segment, Yip argues that epenthesis is the result of this preservation or the preference of bisyllabic words in Chinese. There are four major types of epenthesis in Cantonese. (4) After a fricative or affricate in a coda position, a vowel is added after this word final fricative or affricate sound to make an extra syllable. This process would make a monosyllabic word in English input a bisyllabic word in Cantonese. When there are two syllables in the word from the English input, the output in Cantonese becomes a word with three syllables. This can happen either at word final position or in the middle of a word, depending on the number of syllables in a word, and also the sound in the coda position of each syllable. The reason for this kind of epenthesis is to keep the salient sounds, which are the obstruents here. Because Cantonese syllable is maximally CVC, and the consonants in coda position are restricted to glides, nasals, or unaspirated stops, all the other consonants need to be processed to fit into the Cantonese syllable structure. The examples are as follows. (5) a. ace /ey si/ b. clutch /kik lik si/ c. cashmere /ke si me/ d. disco /tik si kow/

8

In example 5a and 5b, we can see that a vowel sound is added at word final position after the obstruent; meanwhile, the vowel is added in the middle of the word, but still at the syllable final position in 5c and 5d. (6) Epenthesis after word-final liquids if this would make the output bisyllabic. The second type of epenthesis occasionally happens after word-final liquids. For example, the word ‘file’ turns into /fa:y low/ in Cantonese. The extra sounds are added after the word final liquid. Yip mentioned in the notes that ‘l-final words are often bi- syllabic in English’ (1993); hence Cantonese speakers might assume the monosyllabic word ends with ‘l’ are also bisyllabic, hence epenthesis are used to preserve the bisyllabic feature. The third type of epenthesis happens in sC initial clusters. The consonants here in the clusters are not limited to stops. (7) Epenthesis in between the sC initial clusters. (8) a. smart /si ma:k/ b. switch /si wit tsi/ c. spare /si pe/ d. strawberry /si tʰaw pe ley/ In this set of data, we can see that a vowel is inserted in between the clusters. The reason for this type of epenthesis is that consonant clusters are not allowed in Chinese, but both the sound /s/ and the consonant that is the second half of the cluster are both salient. In order to keep these two salient sounds, a vowel is added to keep both sounds of the initial clusters. The last type of epenthesis happens in C-liquid clusters. (9) Epenthesis in between C-liquid clusters to add an extra syllable if there is only one syllable in the word. The consonant here in this position are stops, and the epenthesis happens after the stop to form a minimally bisyllabic word. As mentioned in the deletion section, liquids are not always deleted. In this case, there is only one syllable in the input words with the C-liquid clusters. Extra sounds are added in between the consonant and the cluster to make the output as a bisyllabic word instead of deleting one element in the cluster to keep it monosyllabic.

9

(10) a. brake /pik lik/ b. cream /key lim/ c. plum /pow lam/ d. film /fi lam/ We can see from this set of data that both elements in the clusters are preserved by epenthesis. If we delete the liquid as mentioned before, for example, the word ‘plum’ would turn into */pam/ in Cantonese. However, it is not the real case in Cantonese. In this case, deletion is blocked if the output would be less than two syllables. This is because Cantonese has the preference of bisyllabic words. By adding sounds in the C-liquid clusters instead of deleting the liquid, the situation of monosyllabic output is avoided. 4.3 Discussion Based on the previous observation from Yip, we can see some preferences of rules in Cantonese loanword phonology. First of all, the output of Cantonese words is as close as possible to the words in English. However, this rule can be violated to keep the basic syllable structure of Cantonese by some repairing strategies such as feature change, deletion, and epenthesis. At the same time, epenthesis is the preferred way to repair the syllable structure. The next thing concluded from this observation is that the salient sounds in the words are preserved by deleting another sound that is not as salient from a consonant cluster. But when the deletion leads to a monosyllabic word, the repairing strategy of epenthesis is used. This phenomenon indicates that having a minimally bisyllabic word and keeping both sounds in a consonant cluster are more important than just keeping one salient feature. Saliency does play an important role while processing the input, but the number of syllables of the output decides whether the salient feature is needed to be take into consideration.

10

5. How does this work in Mandarin? 5.1 Predictions Based on the comparison and the loanword process pattern in Cantonese, some predictions can be made regarding the differences in loanword adaptations between Cantonese and Mandarin. As stated in Yip, epenthesis is a preferred strategy to repair and match the input. Because the speaker wants to preserve the salient feature of the input. A vowel is added to save that salient sound and at the same time to preserve the syllable structure. The epenthesis and deletion happens at both word-initial and word-final positions. The reason for this process at word-initial position is because the differences in English initial consonant clusters and the CG onset only in Chinese. This pattern is similar in Cantonese and Mandarin, so the initial adaptation process would be almost the same for Cantonese and Mandarin. The patterns (2), (7), and (9) apply here. These three patterns might be the same for Mandarin. The coda in Mandarin is restricted to only two sounds, meanwhile, almost all the consonants are allowed as coda in English. English also allows consonant clusters at coda position. There must be a repair to preserve the syllable structure and sound choices in Mandarin. The more salient sounds, such as fricatives and affricates, would be kept and a vowel would be added. Other sounds that are not that salient, such as released stops or liquids, might be dropped. Another option is to add sounds to keep the consonants. The patterns (1), (4), and (6) apply here. These patterns covered the word-final stops, fricatives, affricates, and liquids. The unaspirated stops and nasals are allowed as coda in Cantonese. Hence all the possible codas are covered in Cantonese loanwords. We are going to evaluate the adaptation of stop patterns from Cantonese. What we need to address is the adaptation of the nasal /m/ in Mandarin, which will be addressed in the next section. 5.2 Evaluation of application in Mandarin

PATTERN (1) IN MANDARIN. Word final stops before another consonant are also usually deleted in Mandarin. This is based on the same reason of the perception level that the Mandarin speakers might not even hear the word-final stops. The reason is that those stops are most likely unreleased stops that are hard to detect in speech.

11

(11) a. pound /baŋ/ b. pump /bəŋ/ c. card /ka/ d. Hollywood /hau.lai.wu/ e. chocolate / ͡tsʰiau.kə.li/ f. dink /tʰɪn.kə/ g. pint /pʰɪn.tuo/ From 11a, 11b, and 11c, we can see the word-final stop after other consonants are also deleted in Mandarin. A further step might be assumed that the word-final stops from English are still deleted even if they are not following a consonant. As explained before, those word-final stops are unreleased stops; hence they are hard to detect. However, example 11f and 11g are exceptions of this pattern. The word-final stops are not only preserved. Epenthesis also happened to make them bisyllabic words. There is no clear clue why this exception would happen because both 11a and 11g are quantifiers for mass nouns and the consonants before the final stop are both /n/.

PATTERN (2) IN MANDARIN. This pattern is evaluated with the following examples. (12) a. strawberry /ʂʐ.tuə.pi.li/ b. brandy /bai.lan.di/ d. flannel /fa.lan.ʐuŋ/ e. cracker / kʰə.li.t͡ sia/ Interestingly, only one liquid that was deleted in this set of data. The majority of this type of onset adaptation in Mandarin would still keep the liquid sound even if the English word itself contains at least two syllables.

PATTERN (4) IN MANDARIN. This pattern might be exactly the same for Cantonese and Mandarin because fricatives and affricates are salient and cannot be dropped. (13) a. bus /pa.ʂʐ/ b. Benz /pən.͡ʈʂʰʐ/ c. Bush /pu.ʂʐ/ d. cashmere /kʰai.sz.mi/ e. disco /ti.sz.kʰə/

12

In this set of examples, we see that the fricative and affricates in English are changed into retroflex sounds in Mandarin. The apical vowel is also added after the word-final consonant, which adds a syllabic to the loanword. This pattern works for Mandarin but it also goes through some feature change during the adaptation process.

PATTERN (6) IN MANDARIN. This pattern itself is supposed to be an occasional occurrence in Cantonese. It might be the same for Mandarin, but it can also be the complete opposite in Mandarin. Based on the previous evaluation for pattern (2), it demonstrated that the liquids are preserved more in Mandarin than Cantonese. We might predict that the liquids would still be kept. (14) a. flannel /fa.lan.ʐuŋ/ b. motor /muo.tuo/ c. guitar /͡tsi.tʰa/ d. bar /ba/ Surprisingly, all the final liquids are deleted even if this could lead to a monosyllabic output. However, this pattern itself does not always apply to all the loanwords in Cantonese. We might argue this pattern is not general.

PATTERN (7) IN MANDARIN. This pattern will be illustrated by the following data. (15) a. Smart /sz.ma.tə/ b. strawberry /ʂʐ.tuə.pi.li/ c. Skechers /sz.kʰai.t͡ sʰi/ This pattern works well for Mandarin. A vowel is inserted in between the /s/ and the following consonant, which adds a syllable to the loanword.

PATTERN (9) IN MANDARIN. This pattern deals with the onset cluster, like pattern (7). This pattern may also work for Mandarin. Also, based on the evaluation of pattern (2) in Mandarin, most of the liquids are kept. This pattern should be applicable to Mandarin. The data sets are as follows. (16) a. Black /pu.lai.kʰə/ b. cream /͡tsi.lin/ or /͡tsi. lian/ c. Calvin Klein /kə.lai.ən/ The examples here for this data set are all monosyllabic words in English to match the specification of the pattern. As mentioned in the evaluation for pattern (2) in data set 12,

13

we can already see that the liquid in C-liquid are mostly preserved in Mandarin. These sets of data also illustrate the importance of epenthesis to preserve the liquid sound. 5.3 The different phenomenon in Mandarin regarding nasal /m/ The biggest differences between the Mandarin and Cantonese syllable structure is the inventory for coda position. Mandarin has more restricted choices, namely, the nasal /n/ and /ŋ/ only. This restriction leads to a justification for the same /m/ in the coda, which is not mentioned in Cantonese loanword patterns. Two major strategies that are used here: feature change for nasal/m/ to /n/ or /ŋ/, and epenthesis to add a syllable. Deletion of the nasal /m/ could happen occasionally. These strategies will be illustrated by the data below. (17) a. Adam /ja. taŋ/ b. totem /tʰu. tʰəŋ/ c. shampoo /siaŋ.pʰo/ d. Samsung /san.siəŋ/ e. cream /͡tsi.lin/ or /͡tsi. lian/ f. Mentholatum /man.siəu.ləi.tuən/ g. Backham /pəi.kʰə.xan.mu/ h. Sam /ʂan.mu/ i. uranium /jəu/ k. calcium /kai/ In this set of data, we can see the major strategies of epenthesis and feature change. In 17a and 17b, the word-final /m/ was changed to /ŋ/; in 17c, the /m/ at the end of the first syllable also changed into /ŋ/. In example 17e and 17f, the word-final /m/ changed into the alveolar /n/. Meanwhile, in 17g and 17h, a vowel is added at the end of the word to make an extra syllable whether the word itself is monosyllabic or not. However, in 17i and 17k, not only did the /m/ sound get ‘lost’, the second syllable got omitted. It might be the reason that uranium and calcium are both technical terms in chemistry and they are simplified as a single character term for easier memorization and use. Based on this observation, a conclusion can be made that the general pattern for the adaptation pattern for /m/, it changes the place of articulation but remains it as a nasal, or adds a vowel after it to have an extra sound. The reason and trigger for the two different

14

strategies are not clear. 17i and 17k are exceptions that do not present the loss of one sound, as the data set shows, the nasal sound /m/ are always preserved but processed under some certain rules.

15

6. Conclusion The loanword nativization process reveals the phonological structure of the native language. Loanwords from other languages provide data that does not exist in the native language hence the structure can be evaluated and assessed. This paper compares the differences in syllable structure of Mandarin and Cantonese and evaluates the capability of application of the loanword adaptation patterns from Cantonese to Mandarin. Among the six general patterns that describe Cantonese loanword adaptation process, there are only two that can be applied directly to Mandarin without any change. The others need some justification or are completely different. When the liquids in consonant clusters are usually lost in Cantonese, they are preserved in Mandarin under most of the circumstances. However, while word-final liquids would trigger epenthesis in Cantonese, they are frequently deleted in Mandarin even if the deletion would lead to a monosyllabic output. Another finding of this paper is the adaptation pattern of the syllable-final nasal /m/ in Mandarin. Cantonese would allow /m/ in coda while it is prohibited in Mandarin. This specific sound is either changed into another nasal or trigger epenthesis to form a new syllable. As discovered by this paper, even if Cantonese and Mandarin share almost the same syllable structure, the loanword adaptation process and the adaptation of certain sounds, namely, liquids, might still be very different from each other. The reason is that the syllable structure of the native language is not the only concern, there are also other factors, just like what Yip suggested for the nativization of Cantonese, salient features and the preference for bisyllabic words are also important facts that affect the process (1993). The facts for Mandarin still need to be considered to explain the differences of the adaptation process for Mandarin and Cantonese.

16

References

DUANMU, SAN. 2007. The Phonology of Standard Chinese. 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

DUANMU, SAN. 2011. Chinese syllable structure. In the Blackwell Companion to Phonology, volume 5, ed. by Marc Van Oostendorp, Colin Ewen, Elizabeth Hume, and Keren Rice, 2151-777. Malden, MA & Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

DONG, XIAOLI, 2012. What Borrowing Buys Us: A Study of Mandarin Chinese Loanword Phonology. Netherland: Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap (LOT) Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics

HANA, TRÍSKOVÁ. 2011. The Structure of the Mandarin Syllable: Why, When and How to Teach it. Archiv Orientalni, 79. 99-146.

HAYES, BRUCE. 2009. Introductory Phonology. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

KAGER, RENE. 1999. Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SILVERMAN, DANIEL. 1992. Multiple Scansions in Loanword Phonology: Evidence from Cantonese. Phonology 9. 289-328.

TIAN, FENG. 2012. Orthographic Constraints on the Integration of English Loanwords in Mandarin Chinese. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 2. 965-71.

WU, FEI, AND MICHAEL KENSTOWICZ. 2015. Duration Reflexes of Syllable Structure in Mandarin. Lingua 164. 87.

YIP, MOIRA. 1993. Cantonese loanword phonology and optimality theory. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 2. 261-91.

17