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Geometric Constraints on Human Speech Sound Inventories
Ewan Dunbar1, Emmanuel Dupoux1
1Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique (ENS-EHESS-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Département des Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure-PSL Research University Paris, France.
Frontiers in Psychology
|July 28, 2016
Summary
Languages develop sound systems where sound properties influence co-occurrence. This study reveals tendencies toward economy and novel local and global symmetry in sound system geometries, supported by individual sound frequency distributions.
Area of Science:
- Phonetics and Phonology
- Linguistic Typology
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Languages exhibit complex sound systems.
- The co-occurrence of sounds is influenced by their shared properties.
- Previous research established the principle of economy in sound systems.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the coherent sound systems in world languages.
- To explore the geometries of sound systems based on inherent sound properties.
- To document typological tendencies in sound system geometries.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of sound system geometries.
- Identification of typological tendencies: economy, local symmetry, and global symmetry.
- Correlation of inventory geometries with individual sound frequency distributions across languages.
Main Results:
- Confirmed the tendency of economy in sound systems.
- Documented two new typological tendencies: local symmetry and global symmetry.
- Found that individual sound frequency distributions support both local and global symmetry.
Conclusions:
- Sound system geometries exhibit economy and novel symmetry properties.
- The frequency of individual sounds across languages favors symmetric sound system structures.
- These findings provide insights into the universal principles governing phonological systems.
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