Modelling the Distribution of Consonant Inventories
نویسنده
چکیده
I would like to derive the answer to our question from the first function of language, which is: "language is meant to convey information from one person to another as quickly and clearly as possible" (Passy 1890). The quick part of this function lies on the part of the speaker, who would rather be lazy than tired; the clear part is on the listener, who must understand the message with as little trouble as possible.
منابع مشابه
Modelling the Distribution of Consonant Inventories by Taking a Functionalist Approach to Sound Change
Certain kinds of sound inventories are more widely found in the world's languages than other kinds. Identifying a language with its speakers, we can state that languages show a preference for certain kinds of sound systems at the cost of other ones. Every language has attained its sound inventory in the course of a long-termed development involving many sound changes. In this paper we will adop...
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In this paper, we put forward an information theoretic definition of the redundancy that is observed across the sound inventories of the world’s languages. Through rigorous statistical analysis, we find that this redundancy is an invariant property of the consonant inventories. The statistical analysis further unfolds that the vowel inventories do not exhibit any such property, which in turn po...
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Certain kinds of sound inventories are more widely found in the world's languages than other kinds. Identifying a language with its speakers, we can state that languages show a preference for certain kinds of sound systems at the cost of other ones. Every language has attained its sonnd inventory in the conrse of a long-termed development .involving many sound changes. In this paper we will ado...
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تاریخ انتشار 1990