“High-Interest Loans”: The Phonology of English Loanword Adaptation in Burmese

The beginnings of this thesis actually lie in the field methods course I took several semesters ago taught by Lynn Nichols, who I thank for both introducing me to such a fascinating language and teaching me techniques of collecting data from a native speaker. My eternal thanks go to Ingyin Zaw, my main Burmese informant, who, as Lynn put it once, is the “gold standard ” for informants. I couldn’t agree more. It’s almost a shame that she had to be one of the first informants I’ve worked with closely. Now I’m spoiled. I could not have written much about phonology without learning from Lisa Lavoie, Patrick Taylor, Jie Zhang, Donca Steriade, and Michael Kenstowicz. I thank Jie especially for leading my individual tutorial and pointing me towards a topic. I also need to thank Jie and Susumu Kuno for writing Lord-knows-how-many recommendations for me. Javier Martín-González and Michele Cotton deserve thanks for offering feedback on n are simply cool people. But the person who has had the most impact on the writing of this thesis is Bert Vaux. Over the past four years, Bert has taught me as a professor, advised me as the linguistics head tutor, and met with me as my thesis advisor countless times over th