The Role of Loanword Diffusion in Changing Adaptation Patterns: A Study of Coronal Stops in Japanese Borrowings

Optimality-Theoretic analyses of loanword phonology account for the phonological adaptations seen in loanwords using one of two mechanisms: markedness constraints in the phonology of L1 speakers, and perceptual biases affecting the input. However, while these analyses may be able to account for the synchronic behavior of a single speaker in borrowing a particular loanword, they cannot easily account for the systematic change over time in loanword adaptation patterns seen in a speech community that is becoming more bilingual in L2.

After examining the adaptation patterns affecting coronal stops before high front vowels in Japanese loanwords, I will argue that the nativization of [ti] and [di] sequences in early loans was not caused by a highly ranked markedness constraint forbidding these sequences, but rather emerged from the cumulative misperceptions and misproductions of loanwords containing [ti] and [di] as they spread throughout the Japanese speech community.