An OT Approach to Loanword Adaptation in Cairene Arabic

Abstract

Cairene Arabic (CA) elects epenthesis as a strategy for adapting loanwords. This paper tackles the reasons why this occurs as well as the different aspects of vowel epenthesis within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT)(McCarthy and Prince, 1993;Prince and Smolensky, 1993) and the relevant literature. This research specifically focuses on loanwords introduced into CA from English. It is shown that OT neatly accounts for vowel epenthesis in loanwords in CA, proving that the attested optimal forms are the result of the conflict between faithfulness and markedness. It is also proven that loanwords are modified according to the productive phonological processes of CA i.e. LI constraints. The special case of s+obstruent blocking effect is discussed universally and with special reference to CA.