Abstract
Variation in phonological adaptation has not always been analysed in detail, but some studies on Standard Mandarin (SM) loanword phonology, where a seemingly wide range of variation is present, have started to uncover cases where instances of variable adaptation are contextually conditioned (e.g. Hsieh, Kenstowicz, & Mou, 2009 on SM nasal codas; Lin 2008 on SM vowels). Our study presents corpus and experimental data in which intervocalic English nasals are variably adapted as either geminates or singletons in SM. We argue that the perceived duration and nasalization of the English prenasal vowels condition which variant is preferred in SM, and suggest how these vowel quality cues are processed and mapped onto SM phonological representation by monolingual and bilingual SM speakers. This study contributes to a better understanding of which phonetic cues modulate variation in adapted forms and how they do so. It also showcases multiple sources for variable loanword adaptation: linguistic contexts, auditory vs. non-auditory inputs, and monolingual vs. bilingual differences.
Highlights
Variable adaptation in loanword phonology has not always been analyzed in detail, but some studies on Standard Mandarin (SM) loanword phonology, where a seemingly wide range of variation is present, have started to uncover cases where instances of variable adaptation are contextually conditioned (e.g. Hsieh, Kenstowicz, & Mou, 2009 on SM nasal codas; Y.-H. Lin, 2008a, 2008b on SM vowels)
We found some words outside the dictionary with a prenasal low back [ɑ] that are not adapted with nasal gemination even though they fulfill both the vowel type and stress location conditions for nasal gemination
T-tests of the vowel type condition reveal that the preference for nasal gemination is significantly higher in both monolingual [t(32)=7.782, p
Summary
Variable adaptation in loanword phonology has not always been analyzed in detail, but some studies on Standard Mandarin (SM) loanword phonology, where a seemingly wide range of variation is present, have started to uncover cases where instances of variable adaptation are contextually conditioned (e.g. Hsieh, Kenstowicz, & Mou, 2009 on SM nasal codas; Y.-H. Lin, 2008a, 2008b on SM vowels). This study presents corpus and experimental data in which intervocalic English nasals are variably adapted with geminates, e.g. Benedict à [pan.nitikhɤ.], or singletons, e.g. Lina à [lina] in SM. Some cases show that one word can be adapted with and without nasal gemination, e.g. Tiffany à [ti.fu.ni]~[ti.fan.nei]. When the prenasal vowel is an unstressed schwa or a reduced vowel in English, the adapted words can appear with or without nasal gemination. We argue that the perceived duration and nasalization of the English prenasal vowels condition which variant is preferred in SM, and we suggest how these vowel quality cues are processed and mapped onto SM phonological representation by monolingual and bilingual SM speakers
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