The phonology of English loan-words in Korean

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the processes whereby loanwords are “copied” to the target language's phonology are fundamentally different from language-internal sound changes. Unlike language-internal sound changes, which occur when the speakers responsible are fully capable of the phonology of the input “source” and the sound changes occur across the entire lexicon, loans tend to be ad hoc, show inconsistent correspondences, and need only meet well-formedness conditions within the target language. This paper argues that this is true of small-scale borrowing, but large-scale borrowing, by contrast, occurs only if the target-language speakers responsible for the loans have a certain degree of competency in the source language and its phonology, and that consequently large-scale copying is parallel to language-internal sound changes, and can be reduced to sound change rules. It is argued that the correspondences found in forms of English loans in Korean may be reduced to a set of sequenced rules, and that most exceptions to these rules are explicable in much the same way as exceptions to language-internal sound change rules: different source varieties, and orthographic influence.