An Optimality Theory Account of Phonological Adaptations of English Loanwords to Ng’aturukana (Turkana) Language

Abstract

Borrowed words get to the system of the recipient language with foreign structures. The borrowed words may feature different sets of phonotactics and alien phonemes in the view of the borrowing language. These new phonotactics and phonemes must, however, be adapted through various phonological adaptation processes to befit the borrowing language rules. This paper sought to analyze how Optimality Theory accounts for how English words are phonologically adapted to fit them into the structure of Ng'aturukana (Turkana), the borrowing language. The paper sought to answer two questions:

• What phonological adaptation processes do the English loanwords undergo when borrowed to Ng'aturukana?


• How does the principle of constraint ranking account for the observed phonological adaptations?

Theoretically, the paper relied on Optimality Theory to account for the adaptation processes. The study collected thirty (30) English loanwords borrowed into Ng'aturukana. These were drawn from the researcher's MA thesis, the researchers' intuition and common radio station discourses in Turkana County (radio Akicha and Sayari). These data were subjected to validation through two adult speakers of Ng'aturukana. The researcher employed a purposive sampling technique in identifying eighteen (18) loanwords that were analyzed to answer the two research questions. The following were some of the key findings: one, insertion, resyllabification, monopthongization, and spirantisation processes are key in adaptation of English words in Ng'aturukana, and two, the OT constraints that facilitate adaptation of loanwords in Ng'aturukana are *DIPH, *[LAB-DENT], *[ə]V, *[ɑ]V, [*DR], *OBSTRUENT-LIQUID, and DEP-IO. The findings are expected to contribute to the credibility of OT as a universal and typological theory and to issues in cross-linguistic loanword phonology.