How Economical are Phonological Inventories?
نویسندگان
چکیده
Since the work of André Martinet back in the 60’s [7], the notion of ‘economy’ has been accepted as one of the main principles underlying the organization of phonological inventories (hereafter PI). This principle, also named MUAF (‘Maximal Use of Available Features’) by John Ohala [8], states that PI are organized along a few phonetic dimensions that they tend to maximize in terms of number of segments. In this paper, we propose a method to quantify the extent of this economy. We observe that it is in fact not maximal and better applies to vocalic than consonantal systems. We also study which are the preferred phonetic dimensions organizing this economy.
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