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| Transliteration and Loan Words： A Perspective from the Nature of Language |
| Zhang Junfeng |
| School of Foreign Languages， China University of Geosciences(Wuhan)， Wuhan 430074 |
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Abstract Language is a particular set of social and conventionalized constraints on inference of conveyed information， reflecting language speakers’ perceptions and conceptions of the external world. This is the commonality of all languages. Different languages arbitrarily constrain different functional domains in different manners and to different degrees. This is what makes language differ. Language in nature is a set of cognition-driven social convention and constraints on inference of received information. In the light of this view on the nature of language， transliteration and loan words are two means of overcoming incommensurability through borrowing the phonetic form of another language， i.e. the cognitive signifier， for a projection and exploration of the signified. The viability of transliterated words and loan words is dependent on two factors， the need for constraining inference of the newly transplanted information， and the compatibility of the words with the constraining rules of the receptor language in terms of phonology and morphology.
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Received: 26 September 2019
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2019, Vol. 58 
