Peter Sipes Phonology

Abstract

Final phonology project

Languages use a stunning variety of phonemes that they use in ways that are both predictable and unique. One of the principles at work is maximization of distinctness. On average, a language has twenty-three consonants that tend to cluster around bilabial, alveolar and velar articulations with stops and nasals being the least marked manners of articulation. The typical language in the data set has 8 vowelsnot including diphthongs. There is a strong correlation between the presence of back round vowels with front unround vowels (i.e. /i/ tends to be a phoneme when /u/ is). Many points about the distribution of phonemes in a language can be brought down to ability to distinguish between phonemes in both production and listening.

Data sample
The data sample consists of twenty-two langauges with two languages sampled from each language family. The spreadsheet can be found at http://bit.ly/112KeUD. The geographical distribution of languages was taken into account as well. Many language families are well distributed: for example, the data points for Indo-European are taken from the Netherlands and Pakistan.

It is important to spread the languages in the data sets over many families because families tend to have similar shared features. In the Caucasian group, both languages have diferent inventories of consonants, but both feature ejective stopsa feature absent in other languages. In the Australian group, both of the selected languages lack fricatives. In short, features brought about by either contact or common ancestry can skew the data. Other problems exist in the data. For many languages there are no reported diphthongs. This is not a problem for some languages: there are no diphthongs. For others there are. Africates are also likely a problem.I know for a fact that Frisian has the africate /t/, but I could not fnd a reasonable source indicating this. (How do I know this? The old saying between the two :Butter, bread, and green cheese is good English and good Fries." versus "Bter, brea, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk." In Frisian, the ts is pronounced /t/.) So assuredly there are similar troubles in the other data sets, since there were other less-studied languages in the list.

Consonants
All languages have consonants, but that is not a terribly informative thing to say. The average language in the data set, which will go unsaid from here on, has twenty-three consonants. They range from eleven consonant phonemes in Cree to ffty-six in Abkhaz.

Average consonant inventory Stops Nasals Trills Fricatives Lateral fricatives Approximants Lateral approximants Glides Africates Total 7.68 3.05 1.05 6.68 0.32 0.09 0.86 1.59 1.68* 23 Looking at the chart, it is easy to see that some classes of sounds are quite marked. Stops and fricatives are relatively common on average. Approximants, lateral fricatives and lateral approximants are not. Nasals seem to be less common at 3.05 phonemes per language on average, but that is refected in the existence of fewer nasal consonant phonemes (10 reported) than, for instance, stops (41 reported). As a ratio of average to number reported, nasals haul in at 30.5% and stops come in at 18.4%. Africates are another matter. The data is incomplete on this count if Frisian (as mentioned in the Data sample section) is anything to go on. If the Na-Dene and Caucasian languages are taken out of the average, there are only 0.27 africates in a given language. I suspect a faw in the data but cannot prove it. That said, some conclusions may be drawn.

There appears to be a group of somewhat more common africates: /ts/ and /t/ were both reported fve times. Of the sixteen africates reported with IPA, all but one began with /t/ or /d/. Additionally, all afriates involve the tongue either staying in place or moving backwardnever forward. This pattern would mirror the africate distribution in English (/d/ and /t/). Some sounds were absent as phonemes in the data set. While it is not a sure conclusion that these sounds do not exist in languges of the world, their appearance is likely marked. For example, English has //, which no language in the data set showed and it defnitely exists as a phoneme. Sounds that appear on the IPA chart that were not reported , , , , , , , , , , , , Voiceless stop superiority

Narrowing down, some sounds are more common than others. Of the 130 reported

phonemes, one special sound is universal. If /t/ is taken as a close variant on /t/, then all languages have a t-sound. Here is a chart of the thirteen most commone phonemes (occuring in more than half of the languages in the sample).

Phonemes occuring in at least half of the languages /t/ ~ /t/ /m/ /n/, /s/, /k/ /p/, /j/ /l/ /w/ /b/ /z/ /r/ // 22 21 20 17 16 15 13 13 13 12 Bilabial, alveolar and velar points of articulation are the least marked. Only the fricative //, which is post-alveolar, is not at one of these three points of articulation. On the other hand, dental ( in 3), retrofex ( in 2), uvular ( in 7) and pharengyal ( in 3) points of articulation are marked. The cause for this distribution is likely tied to keeping sounds distinct from each other. For example, Pashto uses /t/ and //, but not /t/. While both the dental and retrofex positions are marked articulations, they also have some distance between them, which allows distinction between them to be more easily perceived. Breaking the data down a bit more, every voiceless obstruent is more common than its voiced counterpart. Here is a chart of the most common voiced voicless pairs of obstruents.

Voiceless /p/ /t/ /k/ /f/ /s/ // /x/

Number of languages Voiced 17 22 20 11 20 12 8 /b/ /d/ /g/ /v/ /z/ // //

Number of langauges 13 12 11 6 13 7 7

For the 11 of 13 languages, /b/ implies /p/ or /p/. The Afro-Asiatic languages, Mehri and Tachelhit, are the only languages with /b/ but no /p/again underlining the need for a good sample selection. For 11 of the 12 langauges, /d/ implies /t/ or /t/. The exception is Georgian, which will be discussed in a separate section. For 9 of the 11 langauges with /g/, /k/ is implied. Aleut and Georgian are the exceptions. For the fricatives, the situation is much clearer: if a language has a voiced fricative at any point of articulation, there is a corresponding voiceless fricative. Sonorants are the opposite story, best exemplifed with the nasals. Why? Nasals are the only sonorant class that has a voiceless version as phonemic. All others, liquids, glides and faps show only voiced phonemes in the data set.

Voicless /m/ /n/ //

Number of languages Voiced 1 2 2 /m/ /n/ //

Number of langauges 21 20 12

The problem is that while the trend against voiceless nasals is quite strong, the only languages showing these phonemes are the Eskimo-Aleut langauges. To generalize: obsturents tend toward voiceless and sonorants are almost always voiced. As a class, stops and nasals are quite common, everything else is less common. Voiceless stops are at the top of this heap of consonants. Georgian keeps it distinct

One consideration that seems to be at work in consonant inventory is distinctness.

Georgian shows this nicely in its triplet clusters of stops. Ordinarily, as outlined above, languages avoid voiced stops (e.g. /d/) without the corresponding voiceless stop (e.g. /t/). Georgian does not. Instead of having the voiced/voiceless pair in most languages, Georgian clusters its stops (ignoring the labialized and palatalized version) around a voiceless stop and arrives at the phoneme through modifying one feature: voicing, aspiriation or ejection. Georgian maximizes its phonemic distinction this way, since each phoneme isin theory anyway two features away from its neighbor. But this comes at the cost of having a marked

phonology: aspirated stops are marked over non-aspirated stops. Georgian stop triplets Labial Aspirated stop Ejective stop Voiced stop /p/ /p'/ /b/ Alveolar /t/ /t'/ /d/ Velar /k/ /k'/ /g/

Diacritics make it marked

Generally consonants tend toward the unmarked phoneme (e.g. /p/ vs /p/), however

many languages have phonemes that carry diacritics. The following chart shows the phoneme /k/ and its phonemic variants. /k/ and its variants Phoneme # of langauges /k/ 20 /k/ 3 /k'/ 5
*

k/ 1

/k/ 5

/k'/ 1

/k'/ 2

Though the phoneme /k/ would appear to be common appearing in fve languages, it is confned to three families. In any case, phonemes tend toward unmarked variants/k/ appears in twenty languages. /k/'s variants appear in six langauges across three families. The most marked of all variants are the implosive consonants. The only three reported are //, // and //, which all appear in but one language in the sampleMaasai.

* The ' character represents multiple things on the spreadsheet.

Vowels
In some ways, vowels present a much simpler picture, though the data has a major complication. Of all of the languages reported, only three have defnite information about diphthongs (Frisian, Pashto and Swahili). For the most part, all data here will ignore the existence of diphthongs. The average language has eight vowels, ranging from two in Abkhaz to eighteen in Frisian. The big fve

Unlike consonants, only fve vowel phonemes appear in more than half of the

languages: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. Three vowels were near misses: //, // and //. All the others are somewhat marked forms. Front and back and high and low Vowels tend to pair of. Unrounded front vowels tend to pair with their rounded back counterparts with the link strongest between high vowels and weakening until the low vowels of /a/ and // are completely unlinked. All languages with /u/ also have /i/. Japanese matches the /i/ with its unrounded back counterpart, //, which leaves Navajo as the only language with /i/ that lacks /u/. The link between /e/ and /o/ is not as strong: Tiwi and Tlingit have /o/ but not /e/, but Wolof and Aleut have /e/ but not /o/. Frisian is somewhat odd in that it has /e:/, but

not /e/ to go with /o/. The // and // pair has an even weaker link. Cree has // but no //. Mehri and Tachelhit, which are related, both have // but not //. Finally we reach the low vowel pair of /a/ and //. All languages that have one lack the other save two. Mehri and Tachelhit have both /a/ and //. I would go so far as to say that these two vowels are nearly mutually exclusive for reasons of distinctiveness. In all of these pairs, the further the distance on the vowel chart between front and back, and thus distinction between the pair, the correlation between the presence of the back vowel and its corresponding front vowel strengthens. Yet another hint that languages strive to maintain a set of phonemes distinct from each other. Central vowels

As much as we love our // in English, central vowels of all heights are marked forms.

The most common central vowel, // only showed up in six of the languagesand is only considered to be half of a phoneme in Abkhaz. Front rounded and back unrounded vowels These two types of vowels, front rounded and back unrounded, are highly marked. In all cases, except Japanese, the vowel with dominant rounding (unround for front and round for back) must be present for a non-dominant rounding vowel to exist. Cree has // which is back and unround, so we can be sure that it also has //. And the data confrms this.

Turkish, Wolof and Frisian all have //, so we can expect /e/. And the data confrms this as well. Same for /y/ and /i/ in Turkish and Frisian. Only three of the twenty-two languages (Turkish, Wolof and Frisian) have front round vowels. Only one, Cree, has a back unround vowel. Japanese is odd in that it has // where /u/ might be expected. I have no good explanation for this, although it does maintain a degree of distinctiveness from /i/. From unmarked to marked

Vowels for the most part do not carry as much potential for variety expressed by

diacritics as consonants do. All languages have vowels that meet these criteria: oral and normal length. All of the languages in the data set except Tlingit ignore tone at the phoneme level. Vowels are marked for length more often than they are marked for nasality. Though given the paucity of languages that distinguish oral from nasal vowels (Navajo), it might be hard to say except for one detail. The other Na-Dene language in the data set (Tlingit) distinguishes long from short, as does Navajo, but it does not distinguish oral from nasal. It is possible that Navajo made the innovation to diferentiate oral from nasal vowels. While it is tempting to say that Navajo is the innovator, it is also possible that Tlingit had the distinction and has since lost it or turned it into tone.

Diphthongs

Not much useful can be said here given the data. Without a doubt, some languages

have no diphthongs, as that is the data given for Swahili. It is possible that the presence of diphthongs is an Indo-European family or contact feature. For the languages that do have diphthong data (Pashto and Frisian), only one thing can be said: the number of diphthongs is not greater than the number of vowels.

Conclusion
Languages each have their own unique set of phonemes. When phonemes are marked, they can show language family relations: both of the Na-Dene languages contrast vowel lenth, which is not a typical phonemic contrast. Cross-linguistically consonants (23 on average) outnumber vowels (8 on average), though there is large variation on the precise number of consonants and vowels within any given language. Phonemes also have arrangements within each language that strive to maximize distinctionthe Georgian stop triplet and front unroung/back round vowel correlation are two points of evidence for this maximization.