Varied adaptation patterns of English stops and fricatives in Korean loanwords: The influence of the P-map
Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: In order to investigate to what extent perceptual factors affect the borrowing process, we examined the borrowing of English obstruents in Korean by comparing loanword adaptation patterns with the natives P-map (Steriade, 2001b). The orthographic classification technique was used to obtain the P-map (e.g., Wiik, 1965; Schmidt, 1996); 40 native Koreans were asked to choose the best matching Korean sounds with Korean orthography after listening to English nonsense words consisting of the vowel /a/ and 10 English labial and coronal consonants /p b f v t d s z θ ð/ in three prosodic locations such as word onset, pre- and post-stressed intervocalic positions (e.g., /pa/, /ápa/, /apá/). A comparison of the results with loanwords suggests that the P-map, in general, guides the borrowing process although there exist some mismatches between the P-map and the loanword adaptation patterns. Based on the perceptual results, two P-map constraints are proposed: BeSimilar[voice] and BeSimilar[ConDur]. Then, Korean loanwords of English obstruents are analyzed as the interaction between the perceptually motivated constraints and non-perceptual constraints, i.e., Ident(place) and *Cont, under the Optimality Theoretical framework in order to capture the somewhat limited role of the P-map in loanword phonology.
Author: Hanyong Park
Institution: Indiana University
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W1941119680