The adaptation of English loanwords in Luganda: salience and conspiracies

Abstract

This paper examines the adaptation of English loanwords in Luganda. The central argument of the paper is that a variety of factors play a role in the adaptation of loanwords, key among them are perceptual considerations which privilege auditory salience (Kenstowicz 2003). However, salience is not the only factor taken into account. While the imperative to keep salient properties of borrowed words faithful to the English input exists, many changes have to be made to ensure that the constraints on Luganda phonology are observed by loanwords. But the changes have to be minimal. Furthermore, the constraint interaction itself that is involved in the adaptation of loanwords is shown to be part of a conspiracy to prevent a violation of high ranking constraints operating in the phonology of Luganda, notably the over arching requirement to satisfy the NOCoda and *complex constraints. It is also shown- that some of the constraints operating in loanword phonology, and the repair strategies employed to satisfy them, may not be part of the L1 grammar. How are they learned? The OT notion of Emergence of the Unmarked (McCarthy and Prince 1994) provides a possible answer.