Phonological adaptation

Translations

adattamento fonologico | adaptation phonologique | phonologische Anpassung

Article

By phonological adaptation we indicate the process by which a word from a model language is adapted to the phonemic inventory of a target language upon borrowing. Unlike diachronic sound laws within a single language, the changes that occur upon adaptation are not completely regular, even though tendencies may exist for a same phoneme of L1 to be generally rendered as a same phoneme of L2.

Example

The languages of the Ancient Near East, in spite of some cases of convergence, had different phonological typologies, so processes of adaptation are common. One example is the change from emphatic /q/ of Akkadian to a different consonant of Sumerian, when Sumerian borrowed words from Akkadian (as for instance /sagia/ "cup bearer" from šāqû; Emelianov 2014). Similar is the case of the way the same emphatic consonant was rendered in Luwian when borrowing words from Neo-Assyrian, as in the case of the name of the goddess Damqina, rendered in this case as Tamukina (Giusfredi 2012). Here, the insertion of a posterior vowel may have also depended on the perception of the emphatic /q/ in the Assyrian model, which indicates that adaptation from one phoneme can be achieve also by supersegmental strategies.

References

Emelianov, V. Akkadian Loanwords in Sumerian Revised. ACTA LINGUISTICA PETROPOLITANA 1, 483-514. Giusfredi, F.