Phoneme cooccurrence in Phoible inventories
Posted: 13 Apr 2024 22:04
I just wanted to share this graphic that I found on the conlangs subreddit. It shows how often certain phonemes cooccur in a phoneme inventory in the Phoible database.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comme ... occurence/
There are some cool surprises there (of course, they don't need to be empirically real in any way).
https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comme ... occurence/
There are some cool surprises there (of course, they don't need to be empirically real in any way).
- /ɮ/ and /ŋgʷ/ frequently cooccur. Maybe because both are frequent in the Caucasus and North America?
- Mid tones frequently cooccur with labiovelar plosives. Maybe because both are frequent in West Africa?
- Lax mid vowels frequently cooccur with voiced fricatives. Maybe an effect of Bantu?
- Voiced stops frequently cooccur with tense mid vowels. No real idea for an explanation here.
- /ɲ/ and /h/ also frequently cooccur with them. Spanish influence?