opr0AC98

electronic-mail (vs. “yi1-mei4-er3” she-younger sister-son) < “E-mail.” Between the variant forms of the same type (e.g. two semantic forms), other factors such as brevity and existence/absence of semantic associations may play a role in the competition.

The second feature characteristic of loan adaptation in Mandarin is the preference for semantic translation over other adaptation approaches. Chinese speakers accord high priority to semantic loans, regardless of their dialectal background (e.g. Cheng 1985: 177, Liu 1986: 41, Norman 1988: 20-21, Chan & Kwok 1990: 18-23, Masini 1993: 135-145, Chen 1999: 100-106, Shi 2004: 234-237). As Cheng (1985: 177) notes, Chinese speakers tend to translate meaning and generally treat transcription (of pronunciation) “warily and disapprovingly.” Norman (1988) and Masini (1993) observe that phonemic borrowings often serve a transitional purpose in the history of foreign loans. If a semantic adaptation of a foreign word is coined besides a phonemic one, the former will gradually gain popularity and eventually replace the latter version.

Masini (1993) provides rich data which evidence the uncertainty of foreign loans borrowed into Chinese during the period 1840-1898 and the stronger vitality of semantic adaptations than their phonemic counterparts. Examples are given in (17). The phonemic versions have now completely fallen out of use. The forms in boldface, which survive in modern Mandarin as the standard form, are always a semantic translation. For example, for the English word “parliament,” the phonemic and hybrid forms, e.g. “ba1-li2-man3”

(to cling to-centimeter-full) and “ba1-li2-man3-[ya3-men]” (to cling to-centimeter-full-[feudal government office]), have been replaced by the semantic versions, “guo2-hui4” (nation-meeting) and “yi4-hui4” (to discuss-meeting).

Notes: 1) PP: Purely phonemic loan; 2) PS: Phonemic loan with semantic associations; 3) S: Semantic loan; 4) H: Hybrid loan; 5) H-PP: hybrid with a PP component

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vowels /z, / (cf. Li 1999). (In each column of Table 2.3 and table 2.4, the symbol on the left is the Pinyin form, and the one on the right in slashes is the IPA representation.)

Table 2.3. Inventory of Mandarin consonants

Note: / / occurs only in the coda.

Table 2.4. Inventory of Mandarin vowels

Traditionally, the Mandarin syllable is divided into an initial and a final (Chen 1999, Li 1999, Ramsey 1987, Norman 1988). This Initial-Final template of Mandarin syllables is shown in (31). 7 The initial refers to the syllable-initial consonant. The final is further broken down into a medial and a rhyme. The medial is one of the three high vowels /i, u,

y/, realized respectively as glides /j, w, / in actual speech. The rhyme consists of a

nucleus and an ending. The nucleus, which is the main vowel and the tone-bearing unit (TBU), is the only obligatory segment in the Mandarin syllable. The ending can be either vocalic (/i/ or /u/) or consonantal (i.e. /n/ or / /). The vocalic ending is realized phonetically as a glide /j/ or /w/.

7 The structure of the Mandarin syllable has been a subject of great controversy in the study of Mandarin phonology. Disagreement lies mainly in two areas. One is whether the medial should be assigned to the onset position (together with the initial) or to the rhyme slot. The other is whether the vocalic ending should be in the coda or the nucleus position. In either case, the debate does not influence analyses in this research, which only concern adaptations of consonant structures (See Li 1999 and Duanmu 2000 for detailed discussions on the different ways of partitioning the Mandarin syllable.)

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when necessary. The vocalic inventories of these languages will not be given either since this study is primarily concerned with adaptations of consonantal structures.)

(Based on Fox 1990: 28-46, with modifications) Notes: 1) /x/ is realized as [ ] after front vowels and in word-initial positions.

2) /r/ is pronounced with great variability in real speech.

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English syllable in that it can have up to four consonants in the coda in addition to three in the onset (Fox 1990: 47) (e.g. “Sprit” / prit/ petroleum, and “Herbst” /h rbst/ autumn).

The Italian syllable permits one consonant in the coda and up to three in the onset (e.g. “strano” /strano/ strange) (Lori Repetti, personal communication, October 2005). Consonant codas in Italian occur in one of three situations: (1) the first half of a geminate (e.g. “gatto” /gatto/ cat); (2) a nasal homorganic with the onset of the following syllable (e.g. “tanto” /tanto/ a lot); (3) other consonants, either obstruents or sonorants (e.g. /s, r, l, j, w/). In contrast to the English, German and Italian syllables, the Mandarin syllable has

a much simpler construction. Coda consonants are restricted to two nasals /n/ and / /. In

addition, consonant clusters are entirely banned in both onset and coda positions.

In view of the differences in syllable structure, it is predicted that when English, German and Italian words are borrowed into Mandarin, consonant clusters and simplex

consonant codas other than /n/ and / / will undergo adaptation so that the resultant loan

can conform to Mandarin phonotactics. For instance, a plosive coda in English may be either deleted or preserved through vowel insertion. The phonological processes that address these two structures will be investigated in detail in Chapter 4.

In addition to distinctions in phonology and phonotactics, differences in the writing system exert considerable influence on loan adaptation in Mandarin. In contrast to the ideographic script of Mandarin, in which each unit (i.e. a character) stands for a syllable and a morpheme, the writing systems of English, German and Italian are phonemic in nature, with the smallest unit, an alphabetic letter, representing a sound/phoneme. Thus, to assign a foreign loan a Chinese written form commits Mandarin speakers to the choice of particular characters, and hence particular morphemes. Moreover, the abundance of homophonous characters may lead to variations in the orthographic realization of a borrowing if different characters are chosen to represent the same syllable (see §2.2.5).

Based on the brief comparison between the three donor languages and Mandarin, it can be concluded that loan adaptation in Mandarin Chinese inevitably involves both phonological/phonotactic and orthographic nativization. Adaptations on the phonological level involve phoneme mapping from the foreign languages to Mandarin and phonotactic processes that bring a borrowed word into conformity with Mandarin syllable construction rules. On the orthographic level, decisions need to be made as to which character/morpheme should be chosen to represent the meaning and/or pronunciation of the borrowed term. Orthographic factors may interact with phonological adaptation, resulting in great variability in the adaptation. For instance, in order to choose a morpheme which may better convey the meaning of the loan, phonological similarity between the source form and the adapted form might sometimes be sacrificed (see Chapters 3 & 4).

In the following chapters, Mandarin nativization of English, German and Italian loans will be investigated in detail. Both phonological/phonotactic processes and orthographic factors will be discussed, with the focus on the former.

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Chapter 3

Phoneme Substitution in Adaptation of

Phonemic Loans and Hybrids

Phonological adaptation of foreign loans involves two major tasks. One is to map foreign phonemes to the most similar phonemes in the native language. The other is to repair phonotactic structures which are well-formed in the donor language but illicit in the recipient language. In collaboration, the two types of transformation bring about an adapted form that sounds as close to the source word as possible and meanwhile conforms to the native phonology.

Investigation of these two aspects of Mandarin loan phonology will be presented in this chapter (Chapter 3) for phoneme substitution and the next chapter (Chapter 4) for adaptations of illicit syllable structures. Analysis is based on two types of data in the corpus, i.e. phonemic loans and hybrids with a phonemic component. Semantic loans, i.e. loans borrowed through semantic translation, will not be addressed since phonology is not involved in their formation. (See §1.5 and §2.2 for details of the composition of the corpus data.) Since this research focuses on the segmental adaptation of consonants and phonotactic adaptation of syllable structures, the substitution of vowels and the mapping between foreign stress and Mandarin tone will not be discussed. Furthermore, in view of the fact that language borrowing into Mainland Mandarin is predominantly done by bilinguals (§1.2), I assume that the input to Mandarin loanword phonology is the pronunciation of the source word in the donor language.

3.1 Introduction

In the process of segmental mapping from English, German and Italian to Mandarin, the general rule is that a foreign phoneme, if not deleted, will be matched to the closest phoneme available in the Mandarin inventory. For instance, an English voiceless bilabial plosive /p/ may be replaced by a Mandarin aspirated bilabial plosive /p /. The substitution

patterns do not demonstrate any differences between the adaptation of single consonants and that of consonants in clusters. Similarity between phonemes in a lending language and Mandarin may be determined by phonological and/or phonetic closeness (e.g. place and manner of articulation) as well as various other factors (e.g. spelling).

Mandarin loanword phonology displays variations in segmental adaptation in that a single foreign consonant can have alternative Mandarin outputs. In many cases, variations arise from Mandarin speakers’ conscious efforts to choose a particular syllable that can convey proper semantic effects (e.g. a good advertising image for the brand name of a commercial product). For example, in “Simmons” (English, brand name of

mattress) > “xi2-meng4-si” / i-m -sz/ mattress-to dream-to miss, the English alveolar

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