Technical Reports

09-01
Michael Lee Friesner
The Social And Linguistic Predictors Of The Outcomes Of Borrowing In The Speech Community Of Montréal

This dissertation examines the adaptation of loanwords in natural speech based on loanword data from sociolinguistic interviews with native French speakers in Montréal. The Francophone sample was supplemented with interviews with native Spanishspeaking Montrealers, to examine the influence of bilinguals, often reported to be the introducers of borrowings. The social and linguistic factors favoring adaptation as opposed to importation of foreign segments are considered, and within the category of adaptation, the extent to which this adaptation is phonetic vs. phonological is explored. Acoustic analysis of the vowels reveals that the patterns observed lend support to both phonetic and phonological approaches. Some surprising patterns are discovered, notably the adaptation of English /æ/, which exhibits prenasal tensing. Phonetic and social explanations for this result are proposed. For consonants, the adaptation patterns of /r/ and /h/ are found to be conditioned by a number of factors, including, but not limited to, individual speakers’ linguistic ability. Throughout the analysis, limited evidence is found for the influence of neighborhood bilingualism, with individual bilingualism being the predominant determining factor for segment importation in the loanword data, in addition to earliest attestation date, frequency, and sometimes additional social factors.