江西吉安方言中的英源音译词声调——实验研究视角

Tones of the English Loanwords in Ji’an Dialect:An Experimental Perspective

当一个重音语言(如英语)的单词被音译到一个声调语言(如汉语或汉语方言)中时,重音会被适配为声调语言的一个调。在探究这一适配规律时,过往研究主要基于借入语词典或现有词汇,这不可避免地会导致语义因素的介入,在可选语料上也会受到诸多限制,从而影响音系规律的发现。鉴于此,本研究采取实验方法,以英语及尚无现成外来语词典的江西吉安方言为切入点,探究英语词汇被音译进入江西吉安方言时的声调适配规律。研究发现音译词声调受到借出词音节数量、重音搭配以及音节内部结构的影响,而其根本原因在于双语者遵循借出语的语音特征,保留原重音的音高走向。当输入语音信息与借入语的语音配列规则不符时,音译词需要根据借入语语法做出调整。本文为音译词适配机制的研究提供了新的实验数据支撑,并进一步支持了Silverman(1992)提出的多层扫描模型。

When a word of a stress language(such as English)is transliterated into a tone language(such as Mandarin or other Chinese dialects),the stress in the source language will surface as a tone of the borrowing language.To uncover the mechanism behind the adaptation processes,previous studies were mainly based on the data from dictionaries or existing words.This approach,however,is inevitably affected by semantic factors and the availability of existing data,which will eventually hinder the discovery of the underlying phonological principles.Therefore,this study adopts an experimental approach and aims to explore the stress-totone mapping through English and Ji’an Dialect,a dialect in Jiangxi Province without existing loanword dictionary.It is observed that the tones in loanwords vary according to the number of syllables,the position of stress,and the internal syllable structure.The fundamental reason behind all these patterns is that bilinguals follow the phonetic properties of the source words by preserving the pitch contour of the stressed syllable.When the phonetic input from the source language violates the phonotactic restriction of the borrowing language,the input should be modified according to the grammar of the borrowing language.Such finding provides new empirical data to existing loanword studies and further supports Silverman’s(1992)model of Multiple Scansions.