An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis of Vietnamese Loanwords in the Bahnar Language

Abstract

this study aims to develop a phonological adaptation model of Vietnamese loanwords in the Bình Định dialect of Bahnar, an Austroasiatic language of Vietnam’s Central Highlands. It also aims to construct a constraint hierarchy reflecting the phonological patterns of a minority language, and document and analyze lexical change in real time under sociolinguistic influences to identify common semantic domains in the loanword inventory. A corpus of 5,769 loanwords was compiled from dictionaries, field notes, and elicited data, and each item was coded for phonological features. Quantitative counts of adaptation strategies were combined with Optimality Theory (OT) tableaux to model constraint rankings. Results show that coda deletion is the dominant strategy (≈60%), followed by consonant substitution (25%) and vowel epenthesis (15%). Vietnamese tones are neutralized in borrowing, aligning with Bahnar’s register-based prosody. Tableau analyses indicate that a ranking where *CODA and *COMPLEX outrank IDENT-IO and MAX-IO predicts these adaptations. Additionally, reduplication occurs in 9.5% of loanwords, underscoring its role in morphophonological integration. Interdialectal comparison reveals both convergence across Bahnar varieties and localized innovations in Bình Định. The findings support Haugen’s model of borrowing and demonstrate that Bahnar speakers actively reshape foreign items to fit native phonotactics and sociolinguistic norms. This study provides the first systematic OT account of Bahnar loanword phonology, and contributes to comparative Austroasiatic studies, and offers a replicable framework for analyzing contact-induced change in minority languages.