Unpacking

Unpacking

In historical linguistics and language contact, unpacking is the separation of the features of a segment into distinct segments.

Perhaps the most common example of unpacking is the separation of nasal vowels into vowel plus nasal consonant when borrowed into languages which don't have nasal vowels. This can be seen in English borrowings of French and Portuguese words, such as "monsoon" IPA| [mɒnˈsuːn] from Portuguese "monção" IPA| [mõsɐ̃ũ] , but occurs widely, as in Lingala IPA| [balansi] from French IPA| [balɑ̃s] "balance". Here the nasality of the vowel is separated out as a nasal consonant. If this didn't happen the nasality would be lost.

Consonants may also be unpacked. Basque unpacks palatal consonants in Spanish loans, so that for instance "baño" IPA| [baɲo] "bath" appears as "bainu" IPA| [bainu] . Here the palatal feature of the consonant separates out as the palatal vowel IPA| [i] .

Unpacking occurs not just in borrowings, but within a language over time. Sanskrit syllabic ऋ IPA| [r̩] has become IPA| [ɾɪ] in Hindi, which has no syllabic consonants; the rhoticity is maintained by the IPA| [ɾ] , while the syllabic feature is separated out as a vowel.

ee also

The opposite of unpacking is fusion.

References

*Crowley, Terry. (1997) "An Introduction to Historical Linguistics." 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.


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