Contact Linguistics. Chap

Exercise: The following are a number of Japanese lexical items that are products of lexical borrowing and attendant processes of integration. First, try to assign each item to one of the categories in Haugen’s classification (Table 3). What difficulties do you have with this, and what changes in classification would you suggest to resolve them? Second, describe the processes of adaptation and change that the borrowings have undergone. The examples are from Loveday (1996) and Ishiwata (1986).


apaato “apartment” < English apartment.
dai-sutoraiku < Jap. dai “big” + Eng. strike.
dansu paati “dance” < Eng. dance + party.
dorai “unsentimental” < Eng. dry.
goo-sutoppu “traffic signal” < Eng. go + stop.
han-suto “hunger strike” < Eng. hunger strike.
kaa “car, bus or truck” < Eng. car.
ofisu redi “office girl” < Eng. office + lady.
poteto furai “fried potatoes” potato + fry.
raisu “rice served on a plate with a western-style dish” < Eng. rice.
(Compare gohan “cooked rice served in a bowl and eaten with chopsticks” and kome “uncooked rice”).
7. The integration of loanwords.


7.1. Phonological integration.

In cases of relatively light to moderate contact, lexical borrowings tend to be adapted in terms of the phonology and morphology of the recipient language, and become essentially indistinguishable from native items. It is quite easy to find examples of this kind of integration (or, in Haugen's words, importation with phonological and morphological "substitution"). For instance, English loanwords in Japanese tend to be adapted to Japanese pronunciation as well as its preferred CV syllable structure. Japanese accomplishes this adaptation by various means, including epenthesis (e.g., baseball > besuboru), cluster simplification (sweater > seta) and syllabification of glides (quizz > kuizu). Another excellent illustration of the processes of integration is provided by the integration of borrowings from English and other languages into Hindi (and other Indic languages). Part of this involves a complex pattern of substitution of foreign stops and fricatives by perceived equivalents in Hindi. Hock (1991:393) calls this an example of a system-based pattern of substitution. The pattern is summarized as follows:

Foreign /p^h, t^h, k^{h/ ----->} Indic ^{/p, t™ ,} T /

/f, Q, x/ ----> / p^h, t^h, k^h/


English ----> Hindi Example
p^h p proof --> prup^h
t^h T tin ---> Tin
k^h k concrete --> kaNkrit
f p^h phone --> p^ho:n
Q t™^h thermos --> t™^harmas
x (Arabic) k^h xatam --> k^hatam

To find reasons for these substitutions, we need first to compare the very different structures of the Hindi and English obstruent systems, as in the following chart:

English Hindi

p t c* k p t™ T c! k

p^h t™^h T^h c^h k^h

f Q s s* s s*

Hock (1991:394) suggests that foreign non-sibilant fricatives (f, Q, x) are "nativized as the corresponding Hindi voiceless aspirated stops because the friction noise of these aspirates approximates the acoustic impression of the foreign fricatives." Hence: English /Q/, a genuine dental, is rendered as Hindi dental /t™^h/.
English /t/ is really alveolar, post dental, and it is this "post-dentality" that is captured by the post-dental retroflex /T/ of Hindi. Also, English aspirated stops like [p^h, t^h, k^h] may not be perceived as turbulent enough to be considered instances of "true" aspiration by Hindi speakers, where aspiration has a much higher level of turbulence.
Hock's explanation of the substitutions recalls Weinreich's notion of "interlingual identifications" at the phonetic and other levels.