AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 7, Number 2. May 2023 Pp.67-82
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol7no2.5
Phonological Account of English Loanwords Adapted by Qunfudhah Arabic Dialect
Speakers (QAD)
Khedir Almoayidi
English Department
Alqunfudhah University College, Umm Alqura University
Saudi Arabia
Email: kkattaf2014@gmail.com
Received:01/05/2023 Accepted:04/10/2023 Published; 05/24/2023
Abstract:
The current study aimed to investigate, descriptively, how English loanwords become part of Qunfudhah Arabic Dialect (QAD), an Arabic dialect spoken in the southern part of Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of English loanwords were collected using different resources such as social media posts, news articles, blogs, every-day interactions, and shop signs. The purpose was to find out the triggering motive used by QAD speakers to adapt English loanwords. In other words, the paper sought to answer this question: what phonological rules do the QAD speakers implement to adapt the English loanwords? Using the descriptive data analysis method, the results revealed that English loanwords have been phonologically adapted to fit into the host system using a number of processes to map English consonants and vowels into the recipient language. QAD speakers exercised several modifications to produce an Arabic sound on the foreign consonants (English in this situation) by targeting the manner, place, and voicing. Vowels, on the other hand, were mapped according to the height, tensity, or backness using a number of rules such as monophthongization, lengthening, or position shift. All these processes were used by QAD speakers to more easily produce the foreign sounds, especially those sounds which differ from their own system (marked ones). The result of the current study should add more insights into the body of the literature and pave the way for researchers to investigate this Arabic dialect thoroughly.
Key words: dialect, loanword, optimality theory, phonology, Qunfudhah Arabic Dialect
Cite as: Almoayidi, K. (2023). Phonological Account of English Loanwords Adapted by Qunfudhah Arabic Dialect Speakers (QAD). Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 7 (2): 67-82.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol7no2.5
References
Albatˤlyosi. (n.d.) . Al?qtiðˤab Fi Sharh Adab Alketab.
Al-Raba’a, B. I. M. (2015). The manner of articulation of the emphatic /dˁ/in both Saudi and Palestinian dialects. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 3(1), 1-7. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20150301.11
Bin-Muqbil, M. S. (2006). Phonetic and phonological aspects of Arabic emphatics and gutturals (Doctoral dissertation, University Of Wisconsin-Madison).
Bussmann, H. (1996). Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics. Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Calabrese, A. (2005). Markedness and economy in a derivational model of phonology (Vol. 80). Walter de Gruyter.
Calabrese, A., & Wetzels, W. L. (2009). ‘Loan phonology: Issues and controversies.’ In A. Calabrese & W. L. Wetzels (Eds.), Loan phonology (pp. 1-11). John Benjamins Publishing.
Chang, C. B. (2012). ‘Phonetics vs. phonology in loanword adaptation: Revisiting the role of the bilingual.’ In S. Berson, A. Bratkievich, D. Bruhn, A. Campbell, R. Escamilla, A. Giovine, L. Newbold, M. Perez, M. Piqueras-Brunet, & R. Rhomieux (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General session and parasession on information structure (pp. 61-72). Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Davis, S., & Cho, M-H. (2005). Phonetics versus phonology: English word final /s/ in Korean loanword phonology. Lingua, 116(7),1008–1023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2005.06.006
Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, S., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2001). A robust method to study stress “deafness”. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110(3), 1606-1618.
Dupoux, E., Kakehi, K., Hirose, Y., Pallier, C., & Mehler, J. (1999). Epenthetic vowels in Japanese: A perceptual illusion? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25(6), 1568-1578. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.25.6.1568
Evans, W. M. (2014). Morphophonological changes of borrowed words from English to the Lubukusu dialect of Western Kenya. International Journal of English and Literature, 5(2), 45-51. DOI: 10.5897/IJEL2014.0600
Giannini, A. & Pettorino, M. (1982). ‘The emphatic consonants in Arabic: Speech
282 Laboratory Report IV.’ Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples.
Grammont, M. (1950). Traité de phonétique. Paris: Librairie Delagrave.
Heffernan, K. (2005). Phonetic similarity and phonemic contrast in loanword adaptation.
Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 24, 117–23.
Holden, K. T. (1972). Loan-words and phonological systems (Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas, Austin).
Hume, E. & Johnson, K. (Eds.) (2001). The role of speech perception in phonology,
(pp. 1–26). Academic Press.
Iverson, G. K., & Lee, A. (2006). Variation in the Korean integration of English word-final/s. Language Research, 42(2), 239-251.
Jongman, A., Herd, W., Al-Masri, M., Sereno, J., & Combest, S. (2011). Acoustics and perception of emphasis in Urban Jordanian Arabic. Journal of Phonetics, 39(1), 85-95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2010.11.007
Kang, Y. (2003). Perceptual similarity in loanword adaptation: English postvocalic word-final stops in Korean. Phonology, 20(2), 219-273. DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675703004524
Kim, H. (2008). Loanword adaptation between Japanese and Korean: Evidence for L1 feature-driven perception. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 17(4), 331-346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-008-9034-8
LaCharite, D., & Paradis, C. (2005). Category preservation and proximity versus phonetic approximation in loanword adaptation. Linguistic Inquiry, 36(2), 223-258.
https://doi.org/10.1162/0024389053710666
McCarthy, J. J., & Prince, A. (1995). ‘Faithfulness and reproductive identity’. In Papers in Optimality Theory, University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 18 (pp. 249-384). GLSA.
McCarthy, J. J., & Prince, A. (2005). ‘Faithfulness and identity in prosodic morphology’. In R. Kager, H. van der Hulst, & W. Zonneveld (Eds.), The prosody-morphology interface (pp. 218-309). Cambridge University Press
McCarthy, J.J. (2007a). Hidden generalizations: Phonological opacity in Optimality Theory, Equinox. McCarthy, J.J., 2007b. What is Optimality Theory? Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(4), (pp.260–291).
Paradis, C., & LaCharité, D. (1997). Preservation and minimality in loanword adaptation. Journal of Linguistics, 33(2), 379-430. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226797006786
Peperkamp, S., & Dupoux, E. (2003, August). ‘Reinterpreting loanword adaptations: The role of perception.’ In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Vol. 367, p. 370). Barcelona.
Prince, A., & Smolensky. P. (1993). Optimality theory: Constraint ranking in generative grammar. Rutgers Center for Cognitive Sciences.
Prince, A., & Smolensky. P. (2004). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Blackwell.
Silverman, D. (1992). Multiple scansions in loanword phonology: Evidence from Cantonese. Phonology, 9, 289-328. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675700001627
Steriade, D. (2001). ‘Directional asymmetries in place assimilation: A perceptual account.’ In E. Hume and K. Johnson (Eds.), The role of speech perception in phonology (pp. 219-250). Academic Press.
Sibawayh, A. B. A. (1898). Kitab Sibawayh. Bulaq.
Winford, D. (2002). An introduction to contact linguistics. Blackwell Publishing.