LOANWORD ADAPTATION IN LAMA - TESTING THE TCRS MODEL

When words are borrowed from one language into another, they are often adapted to conform with the phonological constraints of the borrowing language. This article looks at the adaptation of six hundred loanwor ds from French and English into Lama in light of the predictions of th e Theory of Constraints and Repair Strategies. The Lama data support t he Minimality Principle, which predicts that ill-formed structures wil l be repaired as economically as possible, and the Preservation Princi ple, which predicts that epenthesis will be favoured over deletion. Th ey also support the claim that the form in which loanwords are stored in the borrowing language is equivalent to the output of the phonology of the source language, even when that includes segments which are il l-formed in the borrowing language. However, the Lama data do not supp ort the Threshold Principle, which predicts deletion when adaptation w ould be too costly.