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Phoneme inventory size and population size

Bibliographic Data

ID2960157
AuthorsJ Hay (0000-0001-8127-0413), Jennifer Hays (0000-0002-8107-1243), L Bauer (0000-0002-7632-0073)
Year2007
Volume83
Issue2
Pages388-400
Publication date2007-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/lan.2007.0071
OpenAlexW1979629452
LanguageEN
Citations received30
References cited15

This short report investigates the relationship between population size and phoneme inventory size, and finds a surprisingly robust correlation between the two. The more speakers a language has, the bigger its phoneme inventory is likely to be. We show that this holds for both vowel inventories and consonant inventories. It is not an artifact of language family

Artifact (error) · Consonant · Correlation · Linguistics · Population · Population size · Sociology · Speech recognition · Vowel · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Demography · Language Development and Disorders · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research

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Unique citing works30
Citations per year1,76
Citation span2009 - 2025 (17)
Citation velocityrecent
Highly citedNo
Citation typesNeutral: 21

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