Loanword adaptation as first-language phonological perception

Abstract

We show that loanword adaptation can be understood entirely in terms ofphonological and phonetic comprehension and production mechanisms in the firstlanguage. We provide explicit accounts of several loanword adaptation phenomena (inKorean) in terms of an Optimality-Theoretic grammar model with the same three levels ofrepresentation that are needed to describe L1 phonology: the underlying form, thephonological surface form, and the auditory-phonetic form. The model is bidirectional, i.e.the same constraints and rankings are used by the listener and by the speaker. Theseconstraints and rankings are the same for L1 processing and loanword adaptation