CHAPTER 1 : Introduction…
1.2 The Sound Systems of Korean and Mandarin
little related research has been undertaken. Thus, this thesis expects to contribute to a better understanding of the process of phonological adaptation between the two languages.
This thesis establishes a Korean-Mandarin Kong-er corpus, which includes 955 phonological words including 2690 syllables. Five phonological patterns which follow Mandarin phonotactics are focused to analyzed, and an analysis of two types of phonotactic violation is also given. The present analysis then applies the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004) in the tenet of Rank-ordering Model of EVAL (Coetzee, 2006).
This thesis is engaged in the pursuit of three questions: What kind of phonological processes are involved in Kong-er adaptation? What roles do Korean phonology and Mandarin phonology play in Kong-er adaptation? Which language do Mandarin speakers follow? The L1 or L2 or neither of them?
The rest of the thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 2 reviews previous literature, including (1) previous studies of the loanword phonology correlated to KM Kong-er, and (2) the theoretical framework of the Optimality Theory (OT). Chapter 3 introduces the corpus established for the purpose of this study and analyzes the observed patterns.
Chapter 4 analyzes the adaptation systems used in KM Kong-er within the framework of OT. Chapter 5 provides a summary and conclusion of the thesis.
1.2 The Sound Systems of Korean and Mandarin
The phonetic inventories of the Korean and Mandarin languages are tabulated in this section. The sound system of Korean in this thesis is based on the Standard Korean used in South Korea, and the Mandarin system is based on the Standard Chinese used in Taiwan. Taiwan Mandarin is phonetically varied from mainland Mandarin in the way that
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
the retroflex sound is usually replaced by dental counterparts (Chuang & Fon, 2010). The maximal syllable form of the Korean and Mandarin languages is identical: (C)(G)V(C).
In Korean phonotactics, the alveolo-palatal affricates /tɕ, tɕh, tɕ’/ are not allowed to precede the semi-vowel /j/ (Sin et al., 2012). For example, neither *tɕjʌ nor *tɕju are allowed in Korean phonotactics. In Mandarin, on the other hand, the alveolo-palatal affricates /tɕ, tɕh/ only occur before the [+high, -back] vocoids such as /i(j), y(ɥ)/ (Lin, 2007). Also, Mandarin does not allow /o/ and /e/ to solely appear in a rhyme.
Phonetic inventories of Korean consonants and Mandarin consonants are shown in tables (1) and (2), respectively. Korean obstruents are considered to have three uncommon contrasts: lax, tense and aspirated. Mandarin, however, only has the aspiration contrast. For a transcription of the tense obstruents, this thesis uses an apostrophe after a consonant. In the phonetic inventories of both languages, voicing does not construct any contrast of consonants in the phonetic inventories of either language, but it still can appear as an allophone in the intervocalic position. However, the [±voice] contrast in the intervocalic position is irrelevant to this current analysis, and thus, is not inscribed in this thesis. Since the form of a source word in KM Kong-er is a phonetic form, the phonetic form of Korean is introduced here.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(1) Korean consonants (based on Sin et al. 2012)
Bilabial Alveolar
Alveolo-palatal Velar Glottal Stop (plosive)
Lax p t k
Tense p’ t’ k’
Aspirated ph th kh
Fricative
Lax s h
Tense s’
Affricate
Lax tɕ
Tense tɕ’
Aspirated tɕh
Nasal m n ŋ (coda)
Liquid (lateral approximant) l
‧
(2) Mandarin consonants (based on Lin, 2007)
Bilabial
While an underlying glide is regarded as a vowel in Korean, the surface form of a glide is considered to be a consonant. Also, the glides ‘/w/, /ɥ/ and /j/’ in Mandarin are classified as consonants either in the underlying or the surfaced form as shown in table (2). Since the source language of KM Kong-er adaptation is that of the Korean phonetic form, this thesis regards a glide as a consonant.
The simplified vowel inventories of the two languages are shown in tables (3) and (4), respectively. Glides are parenthesized in both vowel tables of Korean and Mandarin.
‧
glides /j/ and /w/. The Mandarin vowel system includes five main vowels [i, y, u, a, ə]
and other allophones occur in specific contexts (Lin, 2007). [e, o, ɤ] are allophones of the vowel ‘ə’, and [ɛ, ɑ] are allophones of the vowel ‘a’. In the table (4), the five main phonemes are marked by underlining. Also, Mandarin has five monophthongs /i, y, u, a, ə/ and eleven diphthongs derived from the monophthongs. In addition, Mandarin has three glides /j/, /w/ and /ɥ/. The possible vowels in Mandarin are listed in table (4).
(3) Korean vowels (based on Sin et al., 2012)
Front Back
Unrounded Unrounded Rounded
High i (j) ɯ u (w)
Mid e / æ1 ʌ o
Low ɑ
(4) Mandarin vowels (based on Lin, 2012)
Front Central Back
Unrounded Rounded Unrounded Rounded
High i (j) y (ɥ) u (w)
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
In this thesis, phonotactic violations written in other forms of transcription are also analyzed. In Taiwan, a system of phonetic notation called ‘Zhuyin’ is used for the transcription of Mandarin. Zhuyin is widely used in Taiwan, both in learning to comprehend and write Chinese characters in early education, and in entering electronic text. Also, the transcription of other Chinese languages, whose phonotactics do not exist in Mandarin Chinese, is written in Zhuyin in Taiwan. For the ease of comparison, table (5) below shows each of the counterparts between Zhuyin and the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(5) Zhuyin phonetic system for Mandarin
IPA Zhuyin IPA Zhuyin IPA Zhuyin
p ㄅ t ㄉ k ㄍ
pʰ ㄆ tʰ ㄊ kʰ ㄎ
m ㄇ n ㄋ x ㄏ
f ㄈ l ㄌ
ʨ ㄐ tʂ ㄓ ts ㄗ
ʨʰ ㄑ tʂh ㄔ tsʰ ㄘ
ɕ ㄒ ʂ ㄕ s ㄙ
ɻ ㄖ
a ㄚ ai ㄞ an ㄢ
o ㄛ ei ㄟ ən ㄣ
ɤ ㄜ ɑu ㄠ ɑŋ ㄤ
e ㄝ ou ㄡ ɤŋ ㄥ
ɚ ㄦ
i ㄧ
u ㄨ
y ㄩ
As shown in table (5), consonants (including glides) solely correspond with each character of Zhuyin. In contrast, vowels are denoted in two ways: one way is that a vowel
‧
corresponds with one Zhuyin character such as ‘a (ㄚ)’ and ‘u (ㄨ)’, and the other way is that a rhyme corresponds with one Zhuyin character such as ‘ai (ㄞ)’ and ‘əŋ (ㄥ)’.
The feature matrix of each Korean consonant and Mandarin consonant is offered in (6) to (9). The first two matrices show Korean obstruents and sonorants, and the latter two show Mandarin obstruents and sonorants.
(6) Feature specifications of Korean obstruents
p t k s tɕ h
‧
(7) Feature specifications of Korean sonorants
m n ŋ l
(8) Feature specifications of Mandarin obstruents
p t k f s ʂ ɕ ts tʂ tɕ x
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
(9) Feature specifications of Mandarin sonorants
m n ŋ l ɹ j w ɥ
[sonorant] + + + + + + + +
[continuant] - - - + + + + +
[nasal] + + + - - - - -
[lateral] - - - + - - - -
[labial] √ √ √
[coronal] √ √ √ √
[anterior] + + + -
[distributed] - - - +
[back] - - + - - - + -
[high] - - + - - + + +
‧
particularly for the adaptation of English (Miao 2005, Lin 2008, Lü 2013; to name a few).The study of loanwords in Mandarin that are borrowed from Korean is relatively under-investigated since there are only a few examples of loanwords in Mandarin adopted from Korean. It is because the major part of the Korean lexicon consists of sino-Korean words, which are borrowed in the way of graphic loanwords based on the Chinese characters, in the same way that loanwords from Japanese words do.
Since the ultimate purpose of KM Kong-er is to be as similar to the Korean lyrics (input) as possible, the process of KM Kong-er adaptation can plausibly considered as to be a loanword adaptation.
The Kong-er is similar to loanwords in the way that they usually respect the phonotactics of the L1. Shinohara (2001) notes that ‘The adaptation of foreign words is a process by which native speakers produce acceptable L1 sound sequences by adjusting (?) the L2 into the L1 system’. Miao (2005) also has observed that the phonetic and phonological system of the L1 has an extensive influence on the result in loanword adaptation.
On the other hand, the Kong-ers also can be interpreted as a kind of interlanguage since the result of KM Kong-er pertains to a phonotactic violation which is not allowed in the language from which the loanword is being borrowed. Broselow (2004) and
‧
Espinosa (2004) indicate that a speaker encountering an L2 may establish his/her own grammar, which is not necessarily identical to the L1 or to the L2.
This thesis will discuss three kinds of adaptations: first, the loanword adaptation following the L1 phonotactics (Mandarin), second, the phonotactic violation with patterns pertaining to the L2 phonotactics (Korean), finally, the phonotactic violation with patterns pertaining neither to L1 nor L2 (interlanguage). The present analysis aims to suggest that the KM Kong-er phonology primarily conforms to Mandarin phonology, but that some parts develop other properties that either follow Korean phonology or interlanguage phonology and are written in a Zhuyin or in an English form.
2.2 Optimality Theory
The Optimality Theory (OT) was proposed by Prince and Smolenky (1993/2004), based on the theory of Universal Grammar (UG). OT provides a linguistic model by which all languages can be explained. In OT, all languages share the same set of constraints but have different rankings between constraints. The language-specific rankings of universal constraints, thus, can explain the systematic differences between languages.
In OT, a language form is not derived by the continual application of transformational rules. Instead, an input has an infinite number of possible candidates (outputs) which are generated by GENERATOR (GEN). The most optimal candidate survives at the end as a winner (output). The optimality of candidates is decided by the language-specific constraint ranking, which contains EVALUATOR (EVAL). The process is not a serial process as all of candidates are evaluated by EVAL simultaneously.
‧
constraints and faithfulness constraints. The markedness constraints deal with well-formed output which is required by the phonological structure. Otherwise, the faithfulness constraints manage the faithfulness of the input and output, so that any disparity between the input and output yields a violation.(3) Sample OT tableau
Ranking: Constraint A >> Constraint B >> Constraint C, Constraint D
Input Constraint A Constraint B Constraint C Constraint D
☞ Candidate 1 *! left side of the tableau. A constraint standing at the left dominates a constraint standing on the right side when there is a solid line between the two constraints, while a dotted line indicates that there is no hierarchical relationship between the two constraints. The number of asterisk marks denotes the number of violations of the corresponding constraint, and a fatal violation is expressed with an exclamation mark (!). The symbol of a right-pointing hand (☞) indicates the optimal output among the candidates. In the tableau, therefore, ConA is ranked as the highest constraint, and ConC and ConD are ranked as the lowest ones. According to this ranking, candidates 2 and 3, which violated the constraints B and C, are eliminated from the output, respectively, and candidate 1 wins over candidate 4 since candidate 4 violated more on the constraint D.
‧
2.2.1 Local Conjunction of Constraint
A mechanism of complex constraint, called the ‘local conjunction of constraints’
(Smolensky, 1993/1995), is used in this thesis. A locally conjoined constraint C1 and C2
within a local domain of D ([C1&C2]D) is violated when both of its conjuncts are violated.
Universally, the conjunct constraints C1 & C2 is higher-ranked than each of C1 and C2. The definition of local conjunction and the ranking of constraints is given in (4).
(4) Local Conjunction (Smolensky 1995: 4)
a. Local Conjunction of C1 and C2 in domain D, C1 &l C2, is violated when there is some domain of type D in which both C1 and C2 are violated.
b. Universally, C1 &l C2 >> C1, C2
In the case of the conjunction of a markedness constraint and a faithfulness constraint, the markedness constraint, which is low-ranked and inactive, is high-ranked and activated when the faithfulness constraint is violated (Łubowicz, 2002; Hsiao, 2015).
In this thesis, the markedness constraint *[+aspirated] is activated when the faithfulness constraint IDENT[tense] is violated.
The local conjunction of constraints allows for a wide range of complex phenomena from the Coda Condition (Smolensky 1995), to dissimilation and the Obligatory Contour Principle (Alderete 1997, Itô and Mester 1998), chain shift (Kirchner 1996, Moreton and Smolensky 2002), vowel harmony (Baković 1999) and opacity (Itô and Mester 1998, Moreton and Smolensky 2002). This thesis applies the mechanism to permit complex phenomena related to tensed obstruents and their unaspirated counterparts in chapter 4.
‧
2.2.2 Rank-ordering Model of EVAL (ROE)
The Rank-ordering Model of EVAL (ROE) is a framework under the OT proposed by Coetzee (2006). In this framework, language phenomena are more than categorical, which producing various variations of one linguistic form. Otherwise, classical OT cannot explain the variation appearing in real linguistic phenomena since the constraint ranking only selects the most optimal candidate as an output without a consideration of other possibilities. Instead of disregarding the non-optimal candidates, the ROE discusses the candidates which appear in reality, and treat them as part of a well-formed phonology.
As classical OT, all of the candidates in the ROE are evaluated by EVAL, and a ranking hierarchy within EVAL decides the well-formedness of the candidate set. The more well-formed candidate is the more high-ranked as decided by the ranking hierarchy, and it is more likely to be selected as the optimal output. It also occurs at a higher frequency in the language than the less well-formed candidates.
Since the well-formed candidates (variation) cannot be infinitely chosen, the criterion called ‘critical cut-off’ is used. In the ROE, the critical cut-off line separates the constraint set into two strata: constraints ranked above the line and below the line.
Constraints ranked above the line function just as a constraint set does in the classical OT, which links to the most optimal and grammatical output among the candidates without any variations. However, constraints ranked below the line are different. Unlike as in classical OT, candidates cannot be ruled out by the constraints ranked below the cut-off line, and can even be considered to be a grammatical and a possible output. In this way, variations arise in the ROE.
‧
constraints MAX(segment) and *σ̃ /{i,u} are placed below the cut-off line to ensure the variation (5ab). Since there is solid line between MAX(segment) and *σ̃ /{i,u}, a domination relation exists. The candidate (5a) which violates the constraint on the right side (*σ̃/{i,u}) is the first optimal candidate. Also, it occurs more frequently than the second optimal candidate (5b) does. The two constraints DEP[-high] and [+back]eliminate the ungrammatical candidates (5c-d) above the cut-off line.
The cut-off line can induce three possible situations as shown in (6). As in the first scenario in (6a), candidate 1 violates C3, and candidate 2 violates C4. Since C3 and C4 are below the cut-off line, both candidate 1 and candidate 2 are selected as variations of the input. The dominant constraint below the cut-off line decides more optimal/frequent candidate, relatively.
Another possible situation is shown in (6b), where only the best optimal candidate is chosen without any appearance of variation. The cand2 and can3 are both disfavored by the constraints above the cut-off line, and so are deemed ungrammatical.
The last situation in which a cut-off line is induced is shown in (6c), where no variants appear as output either. Since both cand1 and candidate 2 in (6c) are violating
‧
constraints above the cut-off line (C2, C1), the ROE functions exactly as in the classical OT.
(6) Three possible scenarios regarding the critical cut-off line (Coetzee, 2006) (6a) Variation
In KM Kong-er adaptation, some input-output mappings induce variations in the forms and some do not. Thus, the ROE is applied in the KM Kong-er analysis to reflect actual result of the adaptation.
‧
This research builds a corpus of Kong-er lyrics containing 955 phonological words (2690 syllables) from 11 songs. The phonological words in the corpus are constructed out of 57 tokens of monosyllable words, 328 of disyllable words, 370 of tri-syllable words, and 200 of polysyllable words (maximum seven syllables). The Korean writing system stipulates that every word is separated by a space except for function words which are attached to the preceding lexical morpheme as in the example (1) shown below.
(1) 수지-가 저녁-에 사과-를 먹었어요.
Suji-SUBJ evening-at apple-OBJ ate.
‘Suji ate (an) apple in the evening.’
Thus, this research chose the phonological words as a domain of analysis for two reasons. First, the separation based on the Korean writing rules visually influences Mandarin speakers who create KM Kong-er to perceive a phonological word as a unit.
Second, the K-pop songs that this corpus collected are auditorily punctuated to the p-word level to deliver clarity in the meaning. Thus, phonological words influence both the visual and auditory perception of Mandarin speakers.
All of the Kong-er lyrics were collected from four K-pop Kong-er websites1 managed by Mandarin speakers in Taiwan. The managers of the sites are all female, with an age of between 17-27, and with a mid-to-advanced level of Korean (2-3 years of
‧
studying). In the interviews, which were independently conducted, the Mandarin speakers stated that they relied on both visual inputs from the written source and auditory perception of the songs during the adaptation.
There are two kinds of adaptations in the corpus: one where the data conform to Mandarin phonotactics (L1) and the other where the data violate Mandarin phonotactics by using other transcription such as Zhuyin (the Chinese transliteration system for Taiwan Mandarin) and English. For the adaptations conforming to Mandarin phonotactics, five phonological patterns are observed and discussed namely obstruent de-tensing, coda deletion, glide insertion, lowering and diphthongization. For the adaptation violating Mandarin phonotactics, two types of phonotactic violation are observed: one that follows Korean grammar and the other that follows neither Mandarin grammar nor Korean grammar, which is called interlanguage grammar.
A simplified schema of KM Kong-er adaptation is illustrated in figure 1. Mandarin grammar plays the most important role in KM Kong-er, and two types of violations occupy a minor part of whole, but produce a pronunciation closer to the Korean source.
Figure 1. Three types of grammar adopted in KM Kong-er Korean Grammar
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
3.1 Adaptations in Conformity to Mandarin 3.1.1 Consonant Adaptation
Three phonological patterns for the consonants are observed in the Kong-er corpus, which are correlated with obstruent de-tensing in the onset position, coda deletion, and glide insertion2.
3.1.1.1 Obstruent De-tensing
The Korean consonant has an abundant inventory of obstruents. There is a three-way contrast for the obstruents: lax (plain), tense and aspiratedsounds. Examples are /p, pʰ, p’/, /t, tʰ, t’/, /k, kʰ, k’/ in stops, /tɕ, tɕʰ, tɕ’/ in affricates and /s, s’/3 in fricatives.
Mandarin does not include [tense] contrast, but does includes [spread glottis] contrast.
Examples are /p, ph/, /t, th/, /k, kh/ in stops, /tɕ, tɕʰ/ and /ts, tsh/ in affricates.
In KM Kong-er adaptation, Korean tensed obstruents are de-tensed to [-spread glottis] counterparts regardless of the way of transcription. For example, the obstruent tense stop /p’/ in /ɯn.p’it/ ‘silveriness’ is adjusted to a de-tensed unaspirated counterpart [p] as in 恩比 [ən.pi]. Other examples related to obstruent de-tensing are shown in table (2) below.
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
Overall, 87.97% (139/158) of the Korean tensed stops /p’, t’, k’/ in the corpus are replaced by the Mandarin unaspirated [p, t, k] as in (2a-c), and the rest of the Korean tensed stops (12.03%) are replaced by their unaspirated counterparts in the Zhuyin and English forms. Likewise, the Korean tensed affricate /tɕ’/ and the tensed fricative /s’/ are dominantly replaced by their unaspirated counterparts in Mandarin (2d-e), in 100%
(45/45) for the tokens of the affricate [tɕ] and 96.49% (55/57) of the tokens of the fricative [s]. Only two tokens of Korean tensed fricatives are adapted into Zhuyin/English transcription. To sum up, every token with a tensed consonant (260/260) adopts an unaspirated counterpart both in the Mandarin form or in the Zhuyin/English form. The statistics of obstruent de-tensing are shown in (3). The most dominant results from each category are shadowed in the table.
4 The transcription method for Mandarin-IPA is referred in Lin, Y. H. (2007).
(2) Obsturent De-tensing
Korean source Kong-er in Mandarin Gloss
a. nun.p’it ɹun.pi4 (潤筆) ‘the expression of the eyes.’
b. t’o tou (都) ‘again’
c. k’ot kou (勾) ‘flower’
d. ʌ.tɕ’ʌ.na ou.tɕjou.na (偶九那) ‘Oh dear! (exclamation)’
e. jip.s’u.ri ji.su.li (以速李) ‘lip-PAR’
‧
(3) Statistics of Obsturent De-tensing Korean tensed
consonant Kong-er in Mandarin substitution Number Total Percentage
stop [p’, t’, k’]
fricative [s’] unaspirated
[s] 55
unaspirated counterpart 260 100%
As in table (3), 260 syllables are tensed obstruents in the corpus. 260 tokens are de-tensed and replaced by an unaspirated counterpart. It is noticeable that only an unaspirated counterpart is chosen to be adapted when the Mandarin phonotactics also has an aspirated counterpart.
There is a different view on the traditional three-phoneme contrast in Korean, which is related to the fact that a tensed-obstruent only maps to an unaspirated phoneme (Kingston and Diehl, 1994; Kim and Duanmu, 2004). They argue that the feature [+tense]
is not needed for the Korean phonology system because the feature [voiced] and the [aspirated]/[spread glottis] inherent in the Korean phonology system can decide their contrasts based on tonogenesis theory. Based on their assertion, it is not necessary to
‧
import the markedness feature [+tense]/[+constricted glottis] into the Korean phonological inventory system, as shown in the table (4).
(4) Comparison of the three-phoneme contrast in Korean Example Traditional view Kim & Duanmu (2004)
p’ tensed voiceless unaspirated p lax/unaspirated voiced unaspirated
p’ tensed voiceless unaspirated p lax/unaspirated voiced unaspirated