Structural Variability Shows Power-Law Based Organization of Vowel Systems.

ABSTRACT: Speech sounds are an essential vehicle of information exchange and meaning expression in approximately 7,000 spoken languages in the world. What functional constraints and evolutionary mechanisms lie behind linguistic diversity of sound systems is under ongoing debate; in particular, it remains conflicting whether there exists any universal relationship between these constraints despite of diverse sounds systems cross-linguistically. Here, we conducted cross-linguistic typological and phylogenetic analyses to address the characteristics of constraints on linguistic diversity of vowel systems. First, the typological analysis revealed a power-law based dependence between the global structural dispersion and the local focalization of vowel systems and validated that such dependence was indepe

SUBMITTER: Zhang M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8882920 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature