Faithfulness and perception in loanword adaptation: A case study from Hawaiian

In this paper, I present a study of non-lexicalized adaptations of English words into the Hawaiian language, based on data elicited from two Hawaiian–English bilingual speakers. Hawaiian has a small, uniquely structured phoneme inventory and strict phonotactic constraints. When borrowing words from English, Hawaiians are faced with a number of sounds and sound combinations which are not present in their language. Speakers must make the choice to either delete or adapt illicit consonants, and either insert vowels or delete consonants to repair phonotactic violations. I will discuss the loanword data with reference to three models of sound adaptation: Steriade's (2001) P-map approach to input–output pairing in non-loan phonology, Best's (1994, 1995, et seq.) Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) and Paradis's (1988, et seq.) Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies (TCRS). All three approaches suggest that segmental mappings will be based on a judgment of closeness or similarity of some sort, but they differ on whether similarity is determined on perceptual, articulatory or phonological grounds. I will show that none of these models alone are sufficient to account for the English–Hawaiian adaptations I discuss. As an alternative analysis, I model the observed featural adaptation strategies using a system of OT constraints which draws and expands upon the notion of articulatory similarity from PAM and perceptual similarity from the P-map. I provide explicit perceptual and articulatory similarity judgments to motivate the OT constraints.

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