Variation in loanword phonology- The case of /v/ and /tʃ/ in English loanwords into Saudi Arabic

Abstract

The thesis investigates variation in English loanwords into Saudi Arabic, triangulating across the results of three experimental tasks [non-word perception (oddity task), real loanword production, non-word production] and a short language attitudes survey. This multi-faceted approach allows exploration, for the first time, of the extent to which a range of competing factors - whose individual impact is known from prior research - interact and/or combine to influence how a novel target segment is realized in a loanword context, addressing: input modality (audio and/or written stimulus), participant’s level of exposure to English, target consonant word position and participant’s gender. The empirical focus is on two target consonants that are present in English but absent from most varieties of Arabic including the Saudi variety, but for which there is a near-equivalent in Arabic, and which have been reported to display variability in English loanwords into Arabic: /v/ mapping to [v]~[f], and /tʃ/ mapping to [tʃ]~[ʃ]. The reasons for this variability have not been clearly explored or explained in previous studies. Due to Covid-19, data was collected online with 67 participants, stratified by gender and expected level of exposure to English.

Results from the three tasks converge in suggesting that loanword adaptation is not a unitary phenomenon; various factors combine in different ways in their relative effect on adaptation for each of the two target contrasts, supporting a dynamic model which is sensitive to individual properties of both speaker-hearers.