Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual
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Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, Phonological and Sociolinguistic Factors A Dissertation Presented by Ruiqin Miao to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Stony Brook University December 2005 Copyright by Ruiqin Miao 2005 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Ruiqin Miao We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. ___________________________________________________________ Co-Advisor: Ellen Broselow, Professor, Department of Linguistics ___________________________________________________________ Co-Advisor: Lori Repetti, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics ___________________________________________________________ Marie K. Huffman, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics ___________________________________________________________ Alice C. Harris, Professor, Department of Linguistics ___________________________________________________________ Agnes Weiyun He, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, Stony Brook University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School _________________________________ Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Loanword Adaptation in Mandarin Chinese: Perceptual, Phonological and Sociolinguistic Factors by Ruiqin Miao Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Stony Brook University 2005 This dissertation is a study of Mandarin Chinese loanword phonology, with focus on phoneme substitution patterns for consonants and processes used in resolving foreign syllable structures which are illicit in Mandarin. The data serving as the basis for analysis are loans borrowed into modern Mandarin from three Indo-European languages, namely English, German and Italian. I investigate the perceptual and phonological factors that regulate the variability of loanword adaptation in Mandarin. In addition, I discuss the influence of sociolinguistic factors on the phonological processes observed in the data. Based on the adaptation patterns in Mandarin, I argue that the recipient language speakers’ perceptual knowledge plays a crucial role in loanword phonology and that loanword processes function to create an adapted form that is perceived as sufficiently similar to the source word. I propose a constraint ranking analysis within the Optimality iii Theoretic framework (Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1995). Following Steriade’s (2002) P-map hypothesis, I conjecture that rankings of various correspondence constraints are projected by the perceptual similarity between the source form and the adapted form. Furthermore, this analysis is tested by data from online loan perception and adaptation experiments, the results of which corroborate the hypothesis that perceptual similarity plays an important role in loanword adaptation. This research supports cross-linguistic findings about the preference for faithfulness of manner over faithfulness of other features such as voicing and place (e.g. Broselow 1999, Steriade 2002) and the preference for segment preservation over deletion in loan adaptation (e.g. Paradis & LaCharité 1997, Uffmann 2001, 2004). It enriches our understanding of the role of perceptual similarity and perceptual salience in phonology and their relationship to constraint ranking. iv Table of Contents List of figures and tables ………………………………………...………..…….…….. viii List of symbols and abbreviations ……………………………………………….…….... x Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………….……... xi 1 Loanword adaptation and phonological theories ………………………………... 1 1.1 Introduction …………………...………………………………………………… 1 1.2 Theories of loanword adaptation: Literature review ……………………………. 4 1.2.1 The perception-only approach ………………………………...…………. 5 1.2.2 The production-only approach …………...………………………………. 5 1.2.3 The approach with separate perception and production levels …………... 7 1.2.4 The perceptual-similarity approach ……………………………….....…... 8 1.3 Loanword adaptation in Chinese: Literature review …………………………... 10 1.4 Research goals ………………………………………………………….……... 11 1.5 Data …………………………………………………………………..………... 12 1.5.1 Data collection …………………………………………………...……... 12 1.5.2 Data composition …………………………………………………...…... 13 1.5.3 Target structures: Consonants and consonant clusters …………...……... 16 1.6 Outline ……………………………………………………………………..…... 17 2 Background ……………………………………………………………………….. 19 2.1 The Chinese language ………………………………………………………..... 19 2.1.1 Languages and dialects in modern China ………………………...…….. 19 2.1.2 History of Chinese …………………………………………………..….. 20 2.1.3 History of lexical borrowing into Chinese …………………………..….. 22 2.2 Adaptation approaches and types of loanwords in Mandarin ………………..... 29 2.2.1 Phonemic loans ……………………………………………………...….. 29 2.2.2 Semantic loans ………………………………………………………….. 31 2.2.3 Graphic loans ……………………………………………………..…….. 32 2.2.4 Hybrids ………………………………………………………………….. 34 2.2.5 Potentiality of variant forms and preference for semantic translation ….. 36 2.3 Mandarin phonology and writing system …………………………….……….. 39 2.3.1 Mandarin phonology: phonemes, tones and syllable structure ………..... 39 2.3.2 Mandarin writing system ……………………………………………….. 43 2.4 Comparison between the donor languages and Mandarin …………………….. 43 3 Phoneme substitution in adaptation of phonemic loans and hybrids ……...….. 47 3.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………...……….. 47 3.2 Background …………………………………………………………...……….. 48 3.2.1 Perceptual salience and the P-map hypothesis ………………………….. 48 3.2.2 Differential changeability of segmental features ……………………….. 49 3.3 Patterns of phoneme substitution: Faithful mappings and deviations ………… 50 3.3.1 Plosives ………………………………………………………...……….. 51 3.3.2 Fricatives ……………………………………………………….……….. 56 3.3.3 Palatal outputs of velar plosives and non-palatal fricatives …………….. 62 v 3.3.4 Affricates ………………………………………………………….…….. 64 3.3.5 Nasals ………………………………………………………………..….. 67 3.3.6 Lateral and “r” …………………………………………………….…….. 71 3.3.7 Glides ………………………………………………………………..….. 75 3.3.8 Semantic category and variability of phoneme mapping …………....….. 78 3.3.9 Summary ……………………………………………………...………… 78 3.4 Perceptual similarity and constraint ranking for phoneme substitution …..….... 79 3.4.1 Optimality Theory: An introduction ……………………………….…… 80 3.4.2 Perceptual similarity and faithfulness of segmental features ………..….. 81 3.5 Summary ………………………………………………………..………….….. 89 4 Phonotactic processes in adaptation of phonemic loans and hybrids …..……... 91 4.1 Introduction …………………………………………………………..………... 91 4.2 Background …………………………………………………………..…….….. 92 4.2.1 Variation between preservation and deletion in loanword phonology ..... 92 4.2.2 P-map predictions about the choice of adaptation strategies in Mandarin ………………………………………………...………….... 95 4.3 Adaptation of foreign simplex codas in word-final positions ……………...….. 97 4.3.1 Obstruents …………………………………………………………...….. 97 4.3.2 Nasals ………………………………………………………………….. 99 4.3.3 Lateral and “r” ……………………………………………………...….. 101 4.3.4 Variation between preservation and deletion (Simplex codas) ………... 103 4.4 Adaptation of foreign CC clusters in word-initial and -final positions …….... 105 4.4.1 Onset CC clusters …………………………………………………….... 105 4.4.2 Coda CC clusters …………………………………………………...….. 107 4.4.3 Variation between preservation and deletion (CC clusters) ……….….. 110 4.5 Adaptation of foreign CCC and CCCC clusters in word-initial and -final positions …………………………………………………………………….... 113 4.6 Interaction between phonological factors and adaptation strategies (English loans) …..………………………………………………………..….. 116 4.6.1 Stress ……………………………………………………………….….. 116 4.6.2 Vowel quality, consonant voicing and consonant place ……………..... 117 4.6.3 Phoneme category ……………………………………………………... 119 4.6.4 Segment/cluster position ……………………………………………..... 121 4.6.5 Cluster structure ……………………………………………………….. 122 4.7 Quality of epenthetic vowels ……………………………………………….... 124 4.8 Perceptual similarity and constraint ranking for phonotactic adaptation …….. 128 4.8.1 Perceptual similarity and differential frequencies of segment deletion .. 129 4.8.2 Perceptual similarity and quality of epenthetic vowels ……………….. 132 4.8.3 Free variation of adaptation strategies in the same context ………….... 133 4.9 Summary ……………………………………………………………………... 136 5 Perceptual similarity and online loan perception and adaptation ………….... 137 5.1 Introduction: Goal and design ………………………………………………... 137 5.2 Experiments ………………………………………………………………….. 138 5.2.1 Experiment One: Perception (Similarity judgment) …………………... 138 vi 5.2.2 Experiment Two: Online adaptation (Pinyin) ………………………..... 142 5.2.3 Experiment Three: Online adaptation (Chinese characters) …………... 145 5.3 General discussion ………………………………………………………….... 148 6 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………….. 152 6.1 Summary …………………………………………………………….……….. 152 6.2 Contributions ………………………………………………..……………….. 153 6.3 Directions for future research ………………………………………………... 154 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………….. 157 Appendixes I-IV. Corpus data ……………………………………………………...… 171 Appendix I. English loans (Corpus data) …………………………………….……….. 172 Appendix II. German loans (Corpus data) …………………………………...……….. 207 Appendix III. Italian loans (Corpus data) …………………………………………….. 237 Appendix IV. Loans with variant adaptations ………………………….…………….. 245 Appendix V. Data resources ………………………………………………………….. 254 Appendix VI. Experiment tokens …………………………………………………….. 258 Appendix VII. Experiment