Loanwords adaptation of lexical items in modern papiamentu

Abstract

In this study, we investigate phonological processes of nativization in modern papiamentu economic lexicon. Papiamentu is an Iberian-based creole spoken in Aruba and Netherlands Antilles by about 200 million people. Corpus of this study was formed by words incorporated into papiamentu in the second half of the 20th century. We investigate phonological and morphological alterations in the lexical items oflanguages loaned to the target language (papiamentu) and we account segmental, syllabic and word levels. We conclude that the economic lexicon is adapted following papiamentu linguistic patterns, such as atministrá < administrar “to manage”, in which the consonant sonority loss in syllabic coda is triggered by a phonotatic restriction that prevents voiced obstruent codas.