From UPSID to PRUPSID A Phonetic Reanalysis of the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database

0. Introduction Human language only uses a subset of sounds that are physiologically possible. Within this subset there is a core of widely recurring sounds. The structure and frequency of these speech sounds is extensively described in UPSID – the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (Maddieson 1984), a landmark publication in comparative phonology and point of departure for PRUPSID , a Phonetic Reanalysis of UPSID data. The reanalysis presented here is suggestive rather than exhaustive. It aims to illustrate the enormous research potential of the UPSID database by reanalyzing a specific section of this relatively untapped source of phonological information. The main focus is on phonetic universals in phonological systems; a position that bears directly on the relationship between phonetics and phonology. Phonetics can be roughly defined as ‘the scientific study of speech’. The equivalent definition for linguistics would be then ‘the scientific study of language’. Phonetics is concerned with articulatory, acoustic and perceptual properties of speech sounds; linguistics concentrates on form, meaning and function of language, whether spoken or written. This division between speech and language is a central one and is courtesy of Abercrombie (1972: 1-3). He distinguishes between “language” on the one hand and the “medium” expressing language on the other. The medium carries information in languages and can be visual (in writing), aural (in speech) and tactile (in Braille), among