[Lingtyp] Avoidance of rare phonemes in loanwords

[Hartmut Haberland]

I have a few examples from German, but they do not concern rare phonemes but phonemes in unusual positions.



/x/ in core vocabulary words has two allophones: [x] after back vowels, [ç] after front vowels and consonants. Now either is excluded in word initial position, and [x] only occurs in one morpheme morpheme-initially, the diminutive -chen (always [-çn̩] regardless of the preceding phoneme. There are a few loans like Chemie 'chemistry' which normatively are considered to start with [ç], but there is great variety how the word actually is pronounced, often with initial [k] or even more often with [ʃ]. (The same goes for China which clearly marked as non-core, although it is unclear from which language it should be borrowed, certainly not from English.) I have also heard Chile both with initial [ç] and [tʃ]. A word such as Junta or a place name such as Juarez can be heard both with initial [x] and [j].

German has both [s] and [z] but they contrast only word-internally in core words, [z] being the only option word-initially and [s] word-final. In loans, things are again different. The word Szene should be pronounced with initial [sts] which I have never heard, only [se:nə]; so it is in contrast with Sehne ‘sinew’ [ze:nə]. But Sushi ‘sushi’ is heard both as [ˈsʊʃɪ] and (more common) [ˈzʊʃɪ].



According to Eisenberg (32018), Das Fremdwort im Deutschen, one should define loans in German not etymologically but by synchronic criteria (core vs. periphery), like Luick and Vilém Mathesius did earlier, cf. also my article in Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 51 (2019); a word like Butter is historically a loan from Greek but has all properties of a core word, while Holunder ‘elder’ and Wacholder ‘juniper’ (which are not loans) does not.



Hartmut Haberland



-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> På vegne af JOO, Ian [Student]
Sendt: 14. oktober 2020 12:36
Til: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
Emne: [Lingtyp] Avoidance of rare phonemes in loanwords



Dear all,



I would like to know if there are attested cases like the following:



A language has phoneme A and phoneme B. A and B are phonologically similar. Although A occurs natively in that language, it occurs only rarely, whereas B occurs commonly. When borrowing words that has A, the language replaces A by B, because of the rarity of A compared to B.



I would greatly appreciate your help.



From Hong Kong,

Ian

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