The Perceptual Origin of Added Glottals in Spanish Loans in Modern Nahuan

Authors

Hugo Salgado, Iowa State UniversityFollow
Justin Pinta, Mississippi State UniversityFollow

ORCID

Hugo Salgado: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0032-5433

Justin Pinta: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2422-1871

Abstract

Spanish vowel-final loans are consistently adopted in modern Nahuan languages with an added glottal phoneme: Spanish mesa > Nahuan mesah ‘table’. This adaptation is puzzling because there is no obvious aspect of the phonological or morphological grammar of Nahuan that motivates it. We present evidence that, due to the weakened voicing of Spanish utterance-final vowels, Nahuan speakers perceive Spanish vowel-final words in utterance-final position as ending in the Nahuan glottal phoneme and adopt the word with it. Our proposal bears on the growing body of literature showing that first- and second-language learners are more sensitive to the phonetic characteristics of sounds when they occur in utterance-final position, likely because of their increased length or the fact that they are not masked by following sounds. Consequently, we suggest that the position of source forms within the utterance can affect loanword adaptation.

Comments

The Perceptual Origin of Added Glottals in Spanish Loans in Modern Nahuan © 2024 by Hugo Salgado and Justin Pinta is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.

Publisher

International Journal of American Linguistics

First Page

83

Last Page

123

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1086/727524

Publication Date

1-2024

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures

Keywords

loanword adaptation, Spanish, Nahuan, Nawat

Disciplines

Morphology | Phonetics and Phonology

Recommended Citation

Salgado, Hugo & Justin Pinta. 2024. The Perceptual Origin of Added Glottals in Spanish Loans in Modern Nahuan. International Journal of American Linguistics 90(1). 83–123. https://doi.org/10.1086/727524.