The Adaptation of French Consonant Clusters in Vietnamese Phonology: An OT Account

Abstract

The phenomenon of phonological adaptation arises due to the segmental, phonotactic, supra-segmental, and morpho-phonological restrictions of the borrowing language. This paper specifically discusses the adaptation of French consonant clusters both in onset and coda positions when borrowed into Vietnamese in the framework of Optimality Theory. The primary objective of the current study is to examine how Vietnamese speakers select repair strategies such as epenthesis or deletion in modifying French words. The adaptation of foreign phonemes supports the role of the native language. In French loans adapted in Vietnamese, foreign segments not present in the native language, are completely banned. Phonotactic adaptations of illicit syllable structures showed that deletion is the favored option to avoid clusters in the coda position. Onset clusters, which are disallowed in native Vietnamese, are repaired either by the strategy of epenthesis or deletion. The constraint hierarchy for the Vietnamese loan phonology can be presented as follows: OK-σ >> IDENT-IO (µ) >> MAX-SON >> MAX-Licensed segment >> IDENT-F >> ALIGN-L/ ALIGN-R >> DEP-IO >> MAX-IO.