Investigating a bias for cue preservation in loanword adaptation

Loanword adaptation exhibits a bias favoring sound cue preservation, possibly due to a conservative caution against deleting cues of unsure expendability in a foreign language. This study tests whether listeners are biased to preserve an acoustically ambiguous sound cue in a nonce word framed as originating from a foreign language. Results show the opposite: Listeners are less likely to transcribe an ambiguous sound cue as a phonological segment when the word containing it is framed as a loanword. However, listeners who identify as more open and accommodating to foreign people and languages show relatively more preservation in the loanword condition.