The Role of Perception in Loanword Adaptation Evan Cohen, Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University Part of a PhD dissertation in progress: The Role of Similarity in Phonology: Evidence from Loanword Adaptation in Hebrew This research is supported by the Segol fellowship. WHAT IS A LOANWORD? A word borrowed from a foreign language which undergoes adaptation in order to comply with the grammar of the borrowing language. 3,4,5,7 Some examples: 9 Language French [korason] ‘croissant’ [twalet] ‘toilette’ Ladino [pustema] ‘idiot (woman)’ [sponja] ‘squeegee’ ' Arabic [ lox] ‘an untidy person’ ' [frexa] ‘bimbo’ Yiddish [beygale] ‘pretzel’ [xrop] ‘nap’ SPEECH SOUNDS are something we can measure and evaluate using voice analysis software. If perception is measurable, then similarity based on perception should be measurable too. English: ‘Evan’ [ ] Hebrew: ‘even ’ [ ] Measuring what our auditory systems detects is necessary in order to compare inputs and outputs and quantify similarity. Introduction In order to determine the role of perception, a pilot study was conducted. 1 Description: 57 native speakers of Hebrew heard 54 monosyllabic word pairs. In each pair, the two words differed only in the vowel (18 pairs were identical words). Speakers had to determine whether the words perceived were the same or different. Detecting vowel differences Results: Speakers detect differences between low vowels and other vowels, differences between various tongue root positions and differences in roundness. Speakers have difficulty detecting length contrasts and distinguishing between high and mid vowels. English vowels which are difficult to distinguish from one another are adapted similarly. English vowels which are distinguished from one another are, by and large, adapted differently. Experiment The adaptation of vowels from English into Hebrew is not only due to productional limitations but rather is a result of grammatically conditioned perception – we don’t hear sounds as they are produced but rather we perceive them with a grammatical mechanism which automatically classifies non-native sounds into native categories. Conclusion References 1. Dupoux, E., K. Kakehi, Y. Hirose, C. Pallier, and J. Mehler. 1999. Epenthetic vowels in Japanese. A perceptual illusion? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 25:1568-1579. 2. Graf, Dafna and Adam Ussishkin. 2002. Modern Hebrew Loanword Phonology. Handout. Talk presented at the DGfS in Mannheim, Germany, March 2002. 3. Holden, Kyril. 1976. Assimilation rates of borrowings and phonological productivity. Language 52:131-147 4. Hyman, Larry. 1970. The role of borrowing in the justification of phonological grammars. Studies in African Linguistics 1:1-48. 5. Itô, Junko and Armin Mester. 1995. The core-periphery structure of the lexicon and constraints on reranking. 6. Kenstowicz, Michael. 2001. The role of perception in loanword phonology. Linguistique Africaine 20:1-31 7. Kenstowicz, Michael. 2003. Salience and Similarity in Loanword Adaptation: A Case Study from Fijian. ROA 609-0803 <http://roa.rutgers.edu> 8. Paradis, Carole and Darlene Lacharité. 1997. Preservation and minimality in loanword adaptation. Journal of Linguistics 33:379-430. 9. Schwarzwald, Ora R. 1998. The weight of foreign influence in Hebrew. Am Va-Sefer 10:42-55 (Hebrew) 10. Ussishkin, Adam and Andrew Wedel. 2003. Gestural Motor Programs and the Nature of Phonotactic Restrictions: Evidence from Loanword Phonology. In M. Tsujimura and G. Garding, eds., Proceedings of WCCFL 22, 505-518. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Adaptation is based on similarity. Defining similarity requires a precise account of the role of perception alongside the evaluation of other influences of loan phonology, which will be the focus of my PhD dissertation. Future Research Grammar Is perception equivalent to hearing? If so, we perceive whatever our (non- linguistic) auditory system detects. Or is perception “modified” by a grammatical system? If so, we only “hear” what our linguistic system (i.e. grammar) allows us to hear. Measuring Utterances TO DETERMINE THE ADAPTATIONAL MECHANISM VOWELS can be described articulatorily according to the tongue height, the lip rounding, the length of the vowels etc. The English vowel system has more articulatory contrasts than the Hebrew vowel system has. Hebrew speakers cannot produce all the English vowels they hear, so they have to adapt them to something “useable”. This adaptation is not random, but rather controlled by a grammatical mechanism. Hebrew vowels 2 Adaptation English vowels Objectives WHAT IS THE ROLE OF PERCEPTION IN THE GRAMMATICAL ADAPTATIONAL MECHANISM ? There are undoubtedly several effects on loanword adaptation (orthography, sociolinguistics, conscious knowledge of word structure etc.). The current research focusses on the role of perception . Research Question A. PRODUCTION RESTRICTION ON ADAPTATION: The speech sound X is perceived as X but, due to grammatical constraints, produced as Y. 10 B. PERCEPTION RESTRICTION ON ADAPTATION: The speech sound X is perceived as Y and, therefore, produced as Y. 6,7 Hypotheses What is perception?