The Inadequacy of Filters and Faithfulness in Loanword Adaptation

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to show that segment deletion in borrowings is largely predictable, and that this predictability might be problematic for a filter-based framework since, as we will see, it entails that phonological processes are visible to phonological constraints. For instance, it is at odds with a filter-based framework such as Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993 and McCarthy & Prince 1993), where constraints are in fact "filters", i.e. surface constraints, which do not have access to the processes of the phonological component or the intermediate forms they generate since, by definition, filters deal with final outputs only. Second, this paper will demonstrate that ill-formed segments contained in borrowings are adapted, i.e. recast into a different shape (85.2% of cases), or left unadapted (10.7% of cases) - if these are imports - instead of being deleted. Phonologically-induced segment deletion represents only 2.3% of cases, a fact which is attributed to a principle of the Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies (TCRS; Paradis 1988a,b), the Preservation Principle. It will be shown that, although the Preservation Principle and Faithfulness (Parse and Fill) in OT seem comparable, they make indeed different predictions. In the view of Faithfulness, the optimal output (candidate) is the one which has undergone the least (segment) deletion, i.e. the one whose segments are all "parsed" (realised), in addition to being the one which has undergone the least (segment) epenthesis (Fill). In other words, the Faithfulness constraints (Parse and Fill) establish that the best candidate is the one which is as close as possible to its input. OT treats both Faithfulness constraints on a par in the sense that their ranking with respect to one another - as is the case with any other constraint in this framework - is determined on language-specific grounds, not universal ones. This means that, statistically, segment deletion in loanwords across languages should be observed as often as segment insertion, a prediction which is not empirically supported.The definitive version of this paper was published in Current Trends in Phonology: Models and Methods (1996)Paradis, Carole. (1996). The inadequacy of filters and faithfulness in loanword adaptation. In J. Durand, & B. Laks (Eds.) Current trends in phonology: Models and methods (pp. 509-534). Salford, Manchester: European Studies Research Institute, University of Salford.ISBN: 9781901471007 (Published conference proceedings)This work was made possible in part by SSHRC grants # 410-90-0575 and # 410-94-1296 and FCAR grants # 90-NC-0383 and 95-ER-2305