Kurdish Adaptation of Arabic Loan Consonants

This paper addresses the status of the Arabic loan consonants in Central Kurdish (CK). Based on the Arabic loanwords, it assesses different scenarios on how the foreign consonants are adapted. The paper finds out that Arabic loan consonants in CK can be classified into three groups: Consonants that are part of the phonemic inventory of both languages; consonants that are borrowed faithfully, i.e. without adaptation and finally consonants that are not allowed in the phonemic inventory of CK, i.e. require feature adaptation. The paper also makes contribution to the theories of loan adaptation. It shows that neither Phonological Stance Model nor Phonetic Stance Model can account for the way Arabic consonants are (un)adapted in CK. The faithful borrowing of guttural consonants and the adaptation of dental fricatives and emphatics to match the phonemic inventory of CK shows that there are active marking statements that (dis)allow a combination of features that form a segment. Some other factors also play roles in the faithful borrowing of the loan consonants such as frequency of the loanwords with loan phonemes, orthographic input and the sensitivity of the faithful pronunciation of the loanwords such as the loanwords that are proper names. Common proper names with guttural phonemes are borrowed faithfully.

Bactrian χϸονο ‘(calendar) year, (regnal) year’

Since H. Humbach's Baktrische Sprachdenkmäler (Wiesbaden, 1966) the main etymological proposal for Bactrian χϸονο ‘(calendar) year, (regnal) year’ has been A. Thierfelder's suggestion of a loanword from Hellenistic Greek χρόνος ‘time’. In this article the plausibility of this etymology is re-examined, and it is further argued that it should be rejected on the grounds that the formal phonological differences between the potential Hellenistic Greek source form and its presumable loan-adaptation form in Bactrian are inconsistent with what is known of Bactrian diachronic phonology.

Lowercase Writing in Loanword Transliteration in Japanese

This paper shows how the so-called lower case katakana writing is utilized for the transliteration of loanwords in Japanese, avoiding unpermitted phonological sequences. In order to adapt the foreign ti, di, tu, du, hu sequences, Japanese orthography employs lowercase writing (i. e., written in “small letters”) to preserve the phonological entity of the target words in the transliteration, e. g., disko “disco” → <deisko>, feis “face” → <ɸue:su>. That is, the diphthongal representations have to depend on special symbols, i. e., lowercase glides. Due to many complexities, Japanese writing system, especially the Romanization, is regarded as one of the most complicated systems which cannot be accounted for in a simple way. In order to provide a unified account on this issue, we employ the framework of Optimality Theory and show what kinds of constraints and their ranking relations are required the Japanese lowercase writing. We here claim that vowel correspondence is ranked higher than consonantal correspondence in Japanese lowercase writing. Moreover, the preservation of mora is another important factor in loan adaptation. Furthermore, the constraint ranking is different, depending on the period of adaptation; the new and old loanwords are realized differently from each other, although they have the same phonemic inputs.

Acoustic Bases for Place-Faithful Loan Adaptation

Acoustic Bases for Place-Faithful Loan Adaptation

The Place of the Name in Deuteronomy

The location of Deuteronomy's central sanctuary is an old and important question. This article revisits the question via the lens of the oft' repeated deuteronomic phrase, l&#0277&#353akk&#275n &#353&#0277m&#244 &#353&#257m. Recent research indicates that this phrase is a loan-adaptation of Akkadian &#353uma &#353ak&#257nu, an idiom formulaic to the typology of the Mesopotamian royal monumental tradition, and associated with the inscription and installation of display monuments. Consequently, the frequent description of Deuteronomy's central sanctuary as hamm&#257q&#244m ,&#259&#353er yibh&#803ar YHWH ,&#0277l&#333h&#234k&#257 l&#0277&#353akk&#275n &#353&#0277mo &#353&#257m indicates that this place was associated in some manner with an inscribed monument. A survey of the theme of inscribed monuments throughout the Book of Deuteronomy confi rms this proposition, and points to the deuteronomic identity of &#147the place&#148 as Mount Ebal. Although scholarship has tended to discount the significance of the Ebal tradition to the larger message of the Book of Deuteronomy, the literary, archaeological, epigraphic, and geographical data reviewed here confirm the probability of Ebal as Israel's first central sanctuary, and the installation of Yahweh's monument there as the climax of a critical theme within the book.