How do penguins differ from kangaroos? Pluralization of vowel-final loan nouns in Hebrew

Abstract

The study examines variation in the pluralization of Hebrew loan nouns that end with a vowel. Most loan nouns take the plural suffix - im with no variation, while loan nouns that end with vowels other than a show variation with respect to deleting and not deleting the final vowel. Hebrew native nouns that end with vowels other than a are relatively rare and therefore the Hebrew morphological mechanism is not accustomed to pluralizing them. The paper proposes a hierarchy that predicts which vowels are more or less likely to be deleted. It is based on the accessibility of deletion in existing pluralization paradigms within native words, in addition to the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints. The study provides further support for the claim that the mechanism of word formation takes into account not only the word itself but also its relations to other words in a paradigm. In addition, it sheds light on morphological adaptation of loanwords and provides predictions with respect to their degree of integration.