Strengthening of fricatives in language acquisition and lexical borrowing: The case of Sino-Vietnamese

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to propose and prove that the well-known theory of markedness in language acquisition is also working in lexical borrowing. Principles of first language acquisition have widely been attested to operate in second language and/or foreign language acquisition. However, not much attention has been paid to the comparison between first language acquisition and lexical borrowing, although lexical borrowing also clearly involves similar processes and/or principles of foreign language acquisition in various forms. Specifically, we will show that fricatives of source language are changed to stops in target language, in parallel with the well-known phonological process that fricatives are realized as stops and that they are acquired later than stops in first language acquisition. Supporting evidence is provided from the comparison between general language acquisition data and strengthening of fricatives found in the lexical borrowing from Chinese by Vietnamese. In so doing, we will compare the alveolar fricatives in Chinese and their borrowed forms in Sino-Vietnamese and Sino-Korean.