Loanword Adaptation in Spanish and Mapudungun: a Phonological and Sociolinguistic Analysis

This thesis is a study of Mapudungun loanword adaptation, with a focus on the treatment of foreign phonemes and syllable structures. The data used for analysis in this thesis are Spanish loanwords borrowed into Mapudungun as found in Golluscio (2009) and the World Loanword Database, or WOLD (Golluscio, Fraguas, Mellico 2009), as well as Mapudungun words adapted into modern Chilean Spanish as seen in the RAE Spanish Dictionary (2001). The goal of this thesis is to show that there are deliberate patterns in how loanwords are adopted in both languages, and I investigate the phonological factors as well as sociolinguistic factors that regulate loanword adaptation. Spanish loanwords undergo repair processes such as segmental changes, for example palatalization (1a), suprasegrnental changes, such as stress adaptations (1b), and the deletion of 1 syllables in words with more than three syllables in order to match their native root-word system (1c). (1) Repair strategies used by Mapudungun (Spanish to Mapudungun): a. Palatalization of Ixl b. Stress adaptation 10· ~exal > lofi'fal /bakal > Iwa ·kal c. Deletion of initial syllables leska ·leral > Ika ·le(al 'the sheep' 'the cow' 'the stairs,' 'the ladder'