The emergence of the unmarked: Vowel harmony in Hebrew loanword adaptation (original) (raw)
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The Emergence of UG in the Periphery: Vowel Harmony in Hebrew Loanwords
Proceedings of the 26th meeting of the Israeli Association for Theoretical Linguistics, 2011
This paper addresses the issue of the application of universal grammatical principles in adult grammars. Specifically, I show that the application of vowel harmony in Modern Hebrew (MH), which is not part of the native phonological system, is universally motivated in certain areas of the MH lexicon.
Vowel harmony and universality in Hebrew acquisition
Brill’s Annual of Afoasiatic Languages and Linguistics, 2012
The role of universals versus language specific grammars during acquisition is at the focal point of this study. A corpus-based investigation of two children’s harmony patterns during acquisition is carried out. It is shown that although Hebrew does not have a productive harmony grammar, there is nevertheless a considerable amount of vowel harmony in the children’s productions, suggesting speakers have a universal predisposition for such patterns. The children start out at roughly the same point, the ultimate goal being determined by the ambient language. The developmental paths, however, are individual. One child shows a preference for segmental considerations in determining harmony patterns, while the other shows a preference for prosodic considerations. Both children, however, gradually modify their grammars, presented herein within an Optimality Theoretic framework, ultimately reaching the same goal, an adult grammar without active vowel harmony.
Two paths - one goal: Vowel harmony in the acquisition of Hebrew
Proceedings of the 28th meeting of the Israeli Association for Theoretical Linguistics, 2012
There is much discussion in the literature on the acquisition of vowel harmony in languages with productive harmony systems (Leiwo et al. 2006 for Finnish, Altan 2007 for Turkish, among others). There is, however, little discussion on vowel harmony in languages without an active harmony grammar. In Ben-David's (2001:148) study of Modern Hebrew (henceforth: Hebrew) acquisition, final syllable doubling, resulting in identical syllabic nuclei in the final and penultimate syllables, is mentioned as the first stage of disyllabic productions. When additional syllables are added, the vowel is copied. This doubling is unaffected by vowel quality (Ben-David 2001:149) or stress (Ben-David 2001:151), and is not directly attributed to vowel harmony, but rather to a general preference for reduplicated forms and faithfulness to word-final syllables (Ben-David 2001:150). Mintz and Walker (2006) mention a role that vowel harmony possibly plays in the segmentation of strings in the acquisition of English, hypothesising that infants may show a universal predisposition to use harmony as one of their segmentation cues. In this paper, I not only show that such a predisposition exists in Hebrew, but that the acquiring infant's initial state has an active harmony grammar.
PhD Dissertation Tel Aviv University, 2010
This study investigates the notion of phonological similarity, while focussing on the relevance of similarity to the process of loanword adaptation, the categorisation of sounds, and the distinction among different sounds in a language. The study presents a formal model for the quantification of similarity, and suggests a grammatical system which predicts the outcome of processes of adaptation and perception. In order to construct this model, I appeal to loanwords, as their adaptation has long been recognised as being similarity-based. One may wonder why the study of loanwords is at all relevant in the study of phonological systems. Since the source of loanwords is, by definition, non-native, is there any point in investigating loanwords when studying native phonological systems? Despite their foreign source, loanwords are integrated into the native mental lexicon. Therefore, the study of loanwords could reveal the structural constraints on phonological well-formedness, constraints which are relevant to all lexical items. Since all living languages continue to adopt and adapt loanwords, and these, in turn, continue to undergo adaptation, the system of adaptation, whatever it may be, has to be an active system. I will only briefly address the question of whether the system of adaptation is the same as the native system (§2.2.2). What is important is that there is a system, and this system is similarity-based. The adaptation of loanwords is systematic, and the system is similarity-based. We adapt X as Y rather than as Z, because X is more similar to Y than to Z. The question, of course, is what makes X more similar to Y than to Z. Can this elusive property be identified and quantified within a formal framework? The notion of phonological similarity is appealed to in the literature in order to describe and explain various phenomena. The adaptation of loanwords relies on segmental and prosodic similarity (Hyman 1970, Kenstowicz 2001, Steriade 2001a,b, vii Shinohara 2006 inter alia), rhyming patterns in poetry depend on the similarity between segments (for example, Zwicky 1976, Kawahara 2007). Furthermore, our ability to distinguish categories from one another depends on how similar they are to one another (Best et al. 2001, Escudero et al. 2007, Cohen et al. in progress). And the list of similarity-dependent phonological phenomena goes on. It appears that the notion of similarity is most relevant to phonological theory. I deal with the various approaches to similarity in §5. This study is broken down into several sections. I start with a discussion of loanwords (§2) and the difference between them and the other lexical items in a language. First, I deal with compliant loanwords, those which follow the grammatical constraints of the language (§2.1.1), and then I discuss non-compliant loanwords, those which do not follow the language's restrictions (§2.1.2). I continue by presenting a formal definition of loanwords (§2.1.3 and §2.1.4) and the various sources of loanwords (§2.1.5). Following the introductory sections, I discuss adaptation (§2.2), starting with non-phonological influences on the adaptation process (§2.2.1), followed by the phonological aspects of adaptation (§2.2.2). After defining loanwords, I move on to investigate loanwords in contemporary Hebrew (henceforth: Hebrew). I start with an overview of the language's phonology (§3), focussing on a featural and acoustic analysis of the vowel system (§3.2.1 and §3.2.2), concluding with a rundown of the prosodic constraints on syllable structure and stress. The subsequent section §4 deals primarily with the theoretical frameworks which I adopt in my analyses, starting with Optimality Theory (§4.1) and Stochastic Optimality Theory (§4.2), continuing with a discussion of just noticeable differences, jnds (§4.3) and concluding with a similarity-based model, Steriade's (2001a) P-map (§4.4). viii Section §5 deals with the notion of similarity. First, I present a general view of the notion, focussing on phonological similarity (§5.1, §5.2 and §5.3). Then I present my formal model of similarity (§5.4). This study relies heavily on empirical data from various sources. These are presented in §6. I start with a discussion of my loanword corpus (§6.1), and follow with two experiments I conducted in order to evaluate the predictive powers of my model presented in §5. The following §7 is the heart of this study. Here, I integrate the various notions discussed in the previous sections and present the role of similarity in phonology as reflected in loanword adaptation. First, I discuss the notion of segmental similarity (§7.1) and prosodic similarity (§7.2). Later, I present a few apparent deviations from the norm (§7.3). The final §7.4 presents a similarity-based model for the adaptation of loanwords. The following §8 presents concluding remarks.
How To Pick The Right Vowel: Adaptation Patterns Of English Vowels In Hebrew
Linguistics Colloquium at Ben Gurion University, 2007
(1) Objectives a. Constructing a model accounting for loanword (LW) adaptation in Hebrew b. Determining how much of adaptation is perception (and not: orthography, structural rules/constraints etc.) c. Defining the role of similarity in LW phonology, and quantifying similarity-i.e. giving a concrete and quantifiable definition of phonological similarity (see 9(b)). d. Creating a perception-based model for similarity in LW adaptation-How does perception-based adaptation "work"?
Predicting Adaptation Patterns: Multiple Sources of Hebrew Vowels in English Loanwords
Nicht-native Einheiten und Strukturen. Strategien der Integration und Isolation in der Sprache, 2010
When integrating foreign words into a language, non-native segments in the donor language (L2) may undergo adaptation in order to comply with some (or all) native (L1) phonological restrictions.1 Consonants are almost always bor-rowed uniformly (one-to-one), showing little or no variation during the adap-tation process, i. e. a single input has a single output (e.g. Arabic []Hebrew //). Vowels, however, do not demonstrate such systematic adaptation. A single input may have different outputs (see (1) below) and different inputs may have the same outputs (see (3) below).
Loanword phonology in Modern Hebrew
Brill’s Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics , 2019
The phonology of loanwords often differs from the phonology of native words in various aspects. These differences are evident in the prosodic structure and even the segmental inventory. The differences between the loanword and native phonology, however, are not necessarily stable, and it is often the case that what originated as phonological structures in loanwords which were illicit in the native vocabulary eventually overrode the native norm, bringing about diachronic change to the phonology of the native words. Hebrew is no exception in this respect. The stress system of loanwords differs from that of native words, with the latter's system undergoing changes inter alia due to the effect of loanwords (e.g. ante-penultimate stress, immobile stress patterns). The licit syllable structure inventory of native Hebrew words has been expanded to include loaned structures (e.g. complex codas, triconsonantal structures), and the phonemic inventory of Hebrew now includes several consonants originating in loan-words (e.g. ʒ and d͡ ʒ).