Perception? Orthography? Phonology? Conflicting Forces Behind the Adaptation of English /ɪ/ in Loanwords into Polish

• Authors: Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper deals with a puzzling and theoretically interesting case of the adaptation of English /ɪ/ in loanwords into Polish in which the English sound is predominantly nativized as P /i/ in spite of the fact that the expected substitution pattern is E /ɪ/ → P /ɨ/ as the two vowels are phonetically similar. A detailed analysis of this phenomenon shows that the polonization of E /ɪ/ in anglicisms results from a complex interplay of several factors which include perception, orthography, the Polish phonological system, phonotactic constraints and phonological levelling. The collected data are then examined in the light of two major approaches to loanword adaptation, i.e. nativization-through-perception (e.g. Peperkamp 2005) and nativization-through-production (e.g LaCharite and Paradis 2005). Evidence is provided in favour of the nativization-through-production view since the substitution of E /ɪ/ → P /ɨ/ is shown to be phonologically and not phonetically or perceptually motivated.

Keywords

EN

Loanword adaptation; anglicisms in Polish; nativization-through-perception; nativization-through-production

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 52
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 119-147

Dates

published

2016-03-01

online

2016-03-17

Contributors

author

Jolanta Szpyra-Kozłowska

• Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/psicl-2016-0001