Realization of consonant clusters in foreign words by YorubaEnglish bilinguals

ABSTRACT: A plethora of studieson foreign words borrowed into native languages have shown that a series of consonants is forbidden in the syllable structures of most, if not all, the indigenous languages of the world. These early studies have revealed that the possible syllable canon of these local languages is CV.This paper investigates the consonant clusters and the syllable structure of the foreign words borrowed into Yoruba language. Data were gathered from Yoruba-English bilinguals, such as artisans that possess school certificates, government and public workers and Yoruba-English bilingual Bible. Words with consonant clusters were purposively selected for the study. These words that consist names of persons, places and objects were partially resyllabified to conform to the syllable template of Yoruba language. The approach to the study is based on the assumption of perceptual-similarity school of thought as argued by Steriade 2002; Fleischhacker2002, Walker 2003; Kenstowicz 2003a; Adler 2004.The study reveals that there is an extent to which these foreign words can be modified or else they will forfeit their perceptual similarity which is a major feature of foreign loanwords. The paper also shows that since these words cannot be fully nativised, they retain the syllable feature of English – a series of consonants.

KEYWORDS: cluster, syllable, foreign words, indigenous language, resyllabification