An Optimality Theory Approach To The Syllable Acceptability Of Uyghur Transliterating Loanwords In Xinjiang Chinese Dialect

This thesis is the analysis of syllable acceptability for Uyghur loanwords in the Xinjiang Chinese dialect in the framework of Optimality Theory. Based on precious researches on the Chinese loanword phonology, the present thesis analyzes the syllable adaptation for Uyghur loanwords from two aspects:monosyllabic and polysyllabic loanword adaptation and coda epenthesis.The Xinjiang Chinese dialect is one branch of Mandarin. They are slightly different in the number of vowels and consonants but consistent in the syllable structure. Uyghur language belongs to the Turkic branch of the Altaic family, which has many differences from the Xinjiang Chinese dialect such as Uyghur doesn’t have tone while Chinese is a tone language. When the Uyghur words are borrowed, in order to be accepted by the phonology of the Xinjiang Chinese dialect, they have to be adjusted and nativized phonologically. For the monosyllabic Uyghur word with a coda consonant, influenced by a strong tendency of bisyllabic words, they need to insert a vowel after the final consonant to become bisyllabic words. For the polysyllabic words of Uyghur language, while preserving most segments of input, they need to sacrifice some segments to satisfy the phonology of the Xinjiang Chinese dialect. Deletion occurs on such segments as stops which are not easily perceived because stops’ sonority is the lowest in the Sonority Hierarchy among all the segments. However, not all stops are deleted in the author’s observation, and deletion occurs up to the place of stops.This thesis utilizes OT to account for the syllable acceptability of Uyghur loanword; therefore the above-mentioned factors become phonological constraints and these constraints interact in order to pick up the most harmonic candidate for Xinjiang Chinese dialect. After the analysis, this thesis has found that correct and harmonic syllable structure of the Uyghur loanwords in the Xinjiang Chinese dialect is determined by such a hierarchical constraint ranking which is the phonological grammar of the Xinjiang Chinese dialect:*COMPLEXCOD/CODA-COND>>inWD>>AX-IO(stop]wd)/MAX-IO(ST)/MAX-IO(O)>>DEP-IO>>AX-IO. In addition, both in the monosyllabic or polysyllabic Uyghur loanwords, under the considerations of well-formedness, epenthesis is the prior preference. This thesis focuses on analyzing the coda epenthesis in Uyghur loanwords and provides a perceptual account for the motivations.