Abstract
The purpose of the study is to examine changes that have taken place when Japanese loanwords are borrowed into Atayal. A number of research questions are addressed in this study: (i) how are foreign phonemes adapted in Atayal? (ii) how do Atayal speakers nativize foreign syllable structures that are incompatible with their native phonology? (iii) nouns and adjectives have been claimed to be most easily borrowed cross-linguistically (Whitney 1881; Haugen 1950; Muysken 1981). Can this phenomenon be found when it comes to Japanese loanwords in Atayal? (iv) which semantic fields of loanwords are found in Atayal and which field contains the highest percentage of loanwords. After analyzing 109 Japanese loanwords out of the 1257 Squliq Atayal items that I collected based on the Loanword Typology (LWT) meaning list, the following observations are made. First, in the adaptation of Japanese-Atayal vowels, backness is more important than vowel height. Second, in phonological adaptation of consonants, the continuant feature is changed from [-continuant] to [+continuant] in voiced stops. In fricatives, the manner and laryngeal features tend to be preserved, leaving only changes in the place of articulation features. Third, two phonological processes are found to be employed in the adaptation of Japanese loanwords in Atayal: loss of gemination and nasal assimilation. Fourth, Atayals have less trouble nativizing Japanese syllable structures because they are similar. Instead of the ultimate-stress rule in Atayal, stress is assigned differently in Japanese loanwords depending on the number of syllables. Fifth, nouns are more likely to be borrowed in loanwords from Japanese in Atayal. This conforms to the hierarchy of borrowability proposed by Muysken (1981) where nouns tend to be the category that is more likely to be borrowed than other lexical categories. Sixth, based on the semantic fields proposed by Haspelmath and Tadmor (2009), five fields containing the highest loanword rate in Atayal are: (1) Modern world (64.14%), (2) Religion and belief (17.65%), (3) Clothing and grooming (13.46%), (4) Kinship (13.43%), and (5) Food and drink (13.24%). Based on the borrowing scale proposed by Thomason (2001), the Japanese language contact in Atayal can be categorized in the first level: the casual contact.