Armin Mester of University of California Santa Cruz will speak at the UCSD Linguistics Department Colloquium on April 13, 2009, at 2:00 pm in AP&M 4301.
In Japanese loanwords from English, obstruents that occupy coda position (or are ambisyllabic) in the source language sometimes appear geminated, sometimes not:
cap > kyap.pu BUT captain > kya.pu.ten
bat > bat.to butter > ba.taa
listen > ris.sun listener > ri.su.naa
tax > tak.ku.su tact > ta.ku.to
frog > fu.rog.gu log > ro.gu
Predicting when gemination occurs, and when not, is a well-known problem, and no simple solution based on properties of the English inputs has emerged. This talk has two main goals: (i) To account for both newly established and well-known generalizations regarding obstruent gemination in Japanese loanwords. (ii) To demonstrate the extent to which loanword formation is constrained by the native (Yamato and Sino-Japanese) phonology.