Vowel epenthesis in Japanese loanword adaptation
It is a generally accepted idea that vowel epenthesis is the main strategy used to repair illicit vowels in Japanese loanword adaptation; however, little attention has been paid to the quality of epenthetic vowels and the processes triggering their occurrence. This paper aims at providing an optimal...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Editura Universitatii din Bucuresti
2015-05-01
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| Series: | Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics |
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| Online Access: | http://bwpl.unibuc.ro/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/BWPL_2015_1_BALAN.pdf |
| Summary: | It is a generally accepted idea that vowel epenthesis is the main strategy used to repair illicit vowels in Japanese loanword adaptation; however, little attention has been paid to the quality of epenthetic vowels and the processes triggering their occurrence. This paper aims at providing an optimality-theoretic account of the processes that cause each of the five Japanese vowels to surface as epenthetic vowels. All three processes of vowel epenthesis – default vowel epenthesis, consonant place assimilitation and vowel harmony – are defined in terms of feature insertion or feature spreading (Uffmann 2006, 2007). The paper provides as well a quantitative analysis regarding the frequency of epenthetic vowels and epenthesis strategies. |
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| ISSN: | 2069-9239 2069-9239 |