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Natural Phonology and Loanword Phonology (V/Ith Selected Exai4ples from Miami Cuban Spanish)

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Natural Phonology and Loanword Phonology (V/Ith Selected Exai4ples from Miami Cuban Spanish) NATURAL PHONOLOGY AND LOAMTORD PHONOLOGY (WITH SELECTED EXi\MPLES FROM MIAMI CUBAN SPANISH) By PETER CHRISTIAN BJARK>1AN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1976 Copyright by Peter C. Bjarkraan 1976 DEDICATION This dissertation is for MARY ANITA who was its inspiration and BOHDAN who in the end made it possible. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Besides all the expected types of indebtedness surrounding any advanced graduate education, this dissertation in one special sense or another owes some small part of its existence to each of the following institutions and individuals: My advisors, Bohdan Saciuk and Gary Miller, for remaining always patient and providing so many inspirations along the way. Much of what I know about phonology can be credited directly to Gary Miller; and Bohdan Saciuk has been the kind of teacher, counselor, and personal friend I am not likely, soon if ever, to meet again. The Graduate Council and the Faculty of the Program in Linguistics, for generously awarding the Graduate Council Fellowship and two Graduate Research Assistantships which have made my studies at the University of Florida financially possible. The Department of English at George Mason University for a faculty appointment which provided the needed final impetus for my work. David Stampe, for his early encouragement and for providing me with a topic of relevance. Also, for better or for worse, David's unbroken silence has repeatedly forced me to reach my own unique and hopefully fresh solutions to the problems and issues his theories have inevitably generated. Julie Lovins, for her painstaking and encouraging comments, her genuine interest, and several letters from "the land of the rising sun." Richard Rhodes, for his many enthusiastic and pregnant letters and for the motivations for Chapter Two. Tracy Terrell, for responding rapidly and generously to my requests for his own papers and works-in-progress on Cuban Spanish — these v;orks having provided an inspiration as well as a practical and indispensable guide. Bill Carrillo and Sergio Arnaiz, for all their aid in tracking down several Miami informants. Joan Hooper, Jorge Guitart, Joseph Matlock, Richard Wojcik, and Jonathan Kaye, for answering all my demanding and sometimes impertinent letters and requests. Mrs. John B. l^Jliitworth, my mother-in-law, for financial and emotional support when it was most needed and for the gift of a tape recorder. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bjarkman, my father and mother, for so many intangible gifts over the years which have helped in some small measure to make me a better scholar and a better teacher. And Mary Anita, who after everything is said and done is, above all, the one who made it possible. Somewhat belatedly, I would also like to thank Chauncey Ch'u, whose classes were an enjoyable and satisfying learning experience, whose own time was never too precious to spend a few moments with his inquisitive students, and whose friendship I will treasure for a long time to come as I look back fondly on my Gainesville experience. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKN0^^JLEDGO•IEKTS ABSTRACT Part One Introduction to Natural Phonology CHAPTER ONE BACKGROUND AND ISSUES 1.1 Introduction 2 1.2 Claims of Natural Phonology 10 1.2.1 The innateness of natural processes 11 1.2.2 The restrictive nature of phonological processes 12 1.2.3 The revisions of the innate system 13 1.2.4 The natural order of acquisition 14 1.2.5 The internal representations of adult speech 15 1.2.6 The innate residue in adult grammars 16 1.2.7 Naturalness motivations in linguistic change 18 1.2.8 The prominence of natural loanword phonology 20 1.3 Explanation and Performance Models 25 1.4 Remarks on Cuban Spanish and Methodology 40 NOTES 50 Part Two The Processes of Natural Phonology CHAPTER TWO RULE ORDER AND STAMPE ' S NATURAL PHONOLOGY 57 Preliminary Remarks 57 Conceptions of Rules and Natural Processes 60 Non-suspendability of natural processes 81 2.2.2 Optionality of natural processes 82 2.2,3 Extremity of natural processes 83 2.2.4 Non-linearity of natural processes 84 2.2.5 Phonetic functioning of natural processes 99 2.2.6 Allophonic influences of natural processes 100 2.3 On Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Processes 113 NOTES 140 CHAPTER THREE COMPETING MODELS IN NATURAL PHONOLOGY 146 3.1 Explanation in Stampean Natural Phonology 146 3.1.1 Hypotheses in Natural Phonology 150 3.1.2 The uniqueness of Natural Phonology 176 3.1.3 Two cases of reanalysis 188 3.2 Naturalness and Some Notational Variants 196 NOTES 203 CHAPTER FOUR WORD FORllATION AND PHONOTACTICS IN NATURAL PHONOLOGY 209 4.1 Surface and Underlying Constraints 209 4.1.1 The use of morpheme structure conditions 215 4.1.2 The use of surface phonetic constraints 231 4.2 Active and Passive Grammatical Components 240 4.3 On the Reality of Morpholexical Rules 252 NOTES 261 Part Three The Applications of Natural Phonology CHAPTER FIVE NATURAL PHONOLOGY IN THE MIAIII CUBAN DIALECT 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Issues in Cuban Phonological Studies 5.3 Some Selected Processes in Miami Spanish 5.4 Implications of Natural Processes NOTES CHAPTER SIX LOAN\JORDS AND PHONOLOGICAL STRUCTURES 6.1 Structural Implications of Borrowing Earlier Inadequate Approaches to Borrowing Haugen and Weinreich and Structuralism Chomsky and Halle's Admissibility Theory The "Magnetic Attraction" Hypothesis The Applications of Natural Loanword Phonology CHAPTER SEVEN Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate Council of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy NATURAL PHONOLOGY AND LOANWORD PHONOLOGY (V/ITH SELECTED EXAI4PLES FROM MIAMI CUBAN SPANISH) By Peter Christian Bjarkman December, 1976 Chairman: Bohdan Saciuk Major Department: Linguistics This dissertation provides inter alia the first extensive application of Natural Phonology proposed by Stampe to an investigation of linguistic borrowing. My predominant purpose is to test out some central claims of Natural Phonology — a nascent explanatory theory of phonological components in the granmiars of natural languages being developed by Stampe and his students from the initial assumption that a phonological system is largely the residue of an "innate" system of phonological processes which are significantly revised by the early activities of language learning. It is demonstrated with these eight chapters that claims made by the natural phonologists draw considerable support, among elsewhere, from findings in loanword phonology: loanwords offer examples corroborating the observations about child language acquisition which so far make up the bulk of Stampe 's evidence. It is also the purpose of this work, however, to suggest revisions and amendments at points where Stampe 's theory has already proven intractable and insufficient in the face of a large corpus of cross-linguistic data. Part One is a comprehensive introduction to Natural Phonology. The three chapters of Part Two provide a theoretical background by evaluating some strengths and potential weaknesses of Stampe's pioneer model. Chapter Two clarifies several misconceptions existing in the current literature concerning "rules" versus "natural processes," and on the status of the natural phonemic level of representation which is the relevant level of abstraction in Natural Phonology. Chapter Three outlines some additional hypotheses which are the foundations of Natural Phonology — the Innateness Hypothesis, the Suppression Hypothesis, the Acquisition Hypothesis, the Phonemic Hypothesis, the Phonetic Change Hypothesis — and summarizes several supporting arguments which have appeared only in Stampe's unpublished work (circulating preliminary papers) and are likely unfamiliar to many linguists. Chapter Three also takes up differences between Stampe's version and often incongruent competing variations on Natural Phonology and examines the related problematical areas. In Chapter Four a revised Stampean model is suggested as part and parcel of a more comprehensive Natural Process Morphophonology , incorporating within it a separate word formation or morphological component. This revised model is intended to make lucid precisely how Natural Phonology might more adequately account for both underlying and surface level constraints, which together operate on both the native and "exceptional" (foreign) phonological forms. Discussion in Part Three of this study is devoted to the native phonology and loanword phonology of Miami Cuban Spanish as these are revealed through apparatus of Natural Phonology. l-Jhereas Part Two is concerned largely with defining the concept and role of processes in Natural Phonology, Part Three emphasizes actual applications of the theory. More specifically, Part Three explores the implications of principles of Natural Phonology for the analysis and explanation of loanword data and in the process supports and illustrates claims of the original Stampean model of Natural Plionology as well as the revised model rendered in Chapter Four. This integral part of the dissertation (especially Sections 7.1 through 7.3) extends a series of claims made by Julie Lovins (1973 University of Chicago Dissertation) that loanword phonology essentially is natu ral p honology and that phonological systems are perhaps actually best revealed through active processes in linguis- tic borrowing. Evidence for the dominant role of natural processes in loanword assimilation derives from tapes
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