The phenomenon of phonological adaptation arises due to the segmental, phonotactic, supra-segmental, and morpho-phonological restrictions of the borrowing language. This paper specifically discusses the adaptation of French consonant clusters both in onset and coda positions when borrowed into Vietnamese in the framework of Optimality Theory. The primary objective of the current study is to examine how Vietnamese speakers select repair strategies such as epenthesis or deletion in modifying French words.

The paper investigates the problem of phonological strength relations that account for the organization of speech sounds in a specific fashion in the light of spirantization process as attested in the Assamese language, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the northeastern part of India.In Assamese aspirated stops /pʰ/ and /bʰ/ are spirantized as [f] and [v] in word-final position, leaving the unaspirated stops intact. In word-initial and medial positions spirantization is blocked in Assamese. De-aspiration in Assamese does not apply to word final position when no following consonant occurs. In Assamese, coda is de-aspirated when it is followed by an aspirated onset. However he fricatives /f/ and /v/ never lose their feature [+asp] despite the fact that both consonants occur in the word-final position or in coda position, being followed by aspirated onset. They turn in to /pʰ/ and /bʰ/ respectively when they are followed by obstruents. Nevertheless, the feature [+asp] is maintained in the onset position which does not undergo alternation. Distribution of Assamese aspirated phonemes at word boundary inform us that only the labial stops spirantize at the word-final position unlike coronal and velar stops which are not susceptible to the process of spirantization.

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This paper aims at exploring the issue of whether it is possible to treat translation simply as a strategy in which semantic equivalence between the source language and the target language is established, especially in the context of literary translation which involves socio cultural communication, understanding of register, role relations and attitudinal aspects of language. To what extent a translator can contribute in bridging the gap caused by culture and geography is a question of great concern, as all literary texts are deeply couched in the socially determined and historically grown matrix of a particular culture, which proves to be a major impediment in translation. For example, a culturally specific term in source language may not have the corresponding word in the target language and some words have great suggestiveness in certain contexts whereas some images hardly have equivalents in other languages. To authenticate this point, a few examples of Assamese proverbs and idioms are considered that are very much grounded in the Assamese cultural fabric. In addition to these proverbs, the lexical items used in Assamese traditional folk songs are considered, which can pose difficulties for literary translators.

An attempt is made in this paper to examine whether strong or weak licensing capacity in a phonological domain is an inherent abstract property assigned by UG irrespective of languages or conditioned by phonetic factors. It is the normal case for languages to have homogeneous voice clusters, which are created by spreading both values of the [+/-voice] feature over the entire cluster, usually in a regressive fashion. Assamese exhibits the instance of regressive voicing assimilation, in which it is seen that the segment occurring in the coda position tends to agree in terms of feature [voice] with the following voiced obstruent in the onset position. But this regressive voicing assimilation is blocked by nasals and liquids. Since obstruent clusters agree in terms of sonority value they display assimilaton which is blocked among the segments of different class such as nasals, laterals and rhotics which are characterized by diverse sonority values. Voicing assimilation is functional among the segments of same sonority value and this is blocked between the segments of asymmetric sonority value. The data in this paper are collected from primary sources: ten native speakers of Assamese.