Language Contact and Phonological Contrast: the case of coronal affricates in Japanese loans

要旨

We analyze productions of /tSi / and /ti / in native and loan words in Japanese produced by two generations of speakers. By collapsing across speakers our analysis verifies that this contrast, which is neutralized in native Japanese words, is on average preserved in loanwords. Analysis of generational differences reveals two distinct patterns of preservation. Generation one speakers in our study produced overlapping distributions of /tSi / and /ti/. In contrast, generation two speakers distinguished these strings in all environments. Our data are consistent with the view that the first generation of borrowers mapped the foreign phonological contrast to an allophonic distinction in native Japanese and that the second generation of speakers promoted this weak phonetic distinction to phonemic status. 2 1.0 Ontogeny versus diachrony in contact-induced change This paper introduces language contact data to address the relationship between stability in the grammar of the individual and changes in the language of the community. The central research question is whether language change can be reduced to the transmission of language across generations, which we will refer to as diachronic change,

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