ÎMPRUMUTURILE LEXICALE CA SPAŢII INTERMEDIARE DE CONTACTE INTERLINGVISTICE. NOTE ASUPRA PROBLEMEI ADAPTĂRII FONETICE
LOANWORDS AS INTERMEDIATE SPACES OF INTERLINGUISTIC CONTACTS. NOTES ON PHONETIC ADAPTATION

Author(s): Judit Pál
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Scientia Kiadó
Keywords: language contact, loanword; phonetic adaptation;
Summary/Abstract: Language contact theory has prompted the attention of scientists from different domains as contacts between languages are an extremely complex historical and socio-cultural reality. Studying the various consequences of contacts between different ethnic and linguistic communities has led to the rise of several interdisciplinary approaches in which phenomena like bilingualism or the manifestations of linguistic interference, such as loanwords and/or loan translations, represent and generate in-between spaces of two (or more) coexistent linguistic systems and of transition from one linguistic reality (or “being”) to another. This study aims at reviewing some issues raised by the (morpho-)phonological adaptation of loanwords, with special regard to the Romanian words of Hungarian origin. The phonetic changes involved in the adaptation of a loanword – extracted from the phonetic setting of the source language and introduced into that of the target language – engage the whole system of borrowing language, which does not only operate on the new element, but, as a result thereof, it also reorganizes the already existent ones. Thus, the phonetic adaptation of a loanword is essentially a process of adjusting and readjusting the constituent linguistic units. Although the adaptive mechanisms seek to eliminate the unique phonetic features of the source language in order to maintain the distinctive features of the target language, the process does not always erase all traces of the “foreign” system, and in between the etymon and the later adapted linguistic form sometimes there emerge some intermediate tokens, synchronous and/or diachronic variants.

• Details
• Contents