| Abstract: | In loanword adaptation the adapter is faced with choices as to how to change the word to conform to the native system of phonological constraints. In many cases the native grammar does not provide sufficient guidance to resolve the choices. Recent study of the problem (Fleischaker 2000, Kang 2002, Kenstowicz 2001, Steriade 2002) suggests that notions of auditory salience and similarity play a major role. The adapter will preserve features whose absence would be most noticeable; if a change must be introduced it will be as unobtrusive as possible. This paper reports the results of a study of the corpus of English loans into Fijian (Schutz 1978) from the perspective of salience and similarity. |
