Constraints on the Diversity of Phonetic and Phonological Systems

October 28, 2013 |

Phonological systems and the sounds of the world’s languages show a large diversity. The simplest, such as Hawaiian or Rotokas, only have 12 sounds in their phonemic inventory (Maddieson 1984), while more complex systems such as Changana or !xun have 121 and 141 contrastive segments (Janson & Engstrand 2001, Koenig 2006).

Why are the sound systems and the sounds of the world’s languages so different one from another? How can we explain the basis of this diversity? Can we associate particular sounds or sound systems with specific language families? To answer these questions, we can consider that the only true limits on sound systems is the physics, the vocal tract’s morphology and the constraints on the auditory system.

By looking at detailed variations of the vocal tract anatomy, one could find some sources for the variation observed in the world’s languages. Dediu & Ladd (2003) showed this possibility for the distribution of tone in languages but also emphasized that a key element to account for the distribution of variation is cultural transmission. Small variations transmitted over generations push systems in some direction and towards a certain shape. Data from San languages show the absence of
alveolar ridge in !xoõ (Traill 1985) and facts from some South American languages show the absence of lip rounding and protrusion in some languages (Staveness et al. 2012). In both cases, these anatomical features favor variations in sound production that have been transmitted over many generations to account for the shape of present systems. Finally, another factor linked to the dynamics of gestures, i.e. to their temporal aspects, seems important. If we accept that discrete phonetic gestures are the basis of phonological systems (Studdert-Kennedy & Goldstein 2003), temporal variations in their realizations, both in space and time, could play a role to explain the shape of phonological systems.

The acoustic consequences and the categorization of some gesture variations account for some of the differences found in phonological systems. Data from !xoõ show that the timing of gestures is different between clicks (Traill 1985). The same is true in Amharic to account for differences between short and long ejective fricatives. Therefore, differences in the timing, trajectory, location and in the acoustic output produced by gestures involved in speech are an important factor to account for variations in sounds and likely in the shape of phonological systems. This fact associated with the observation that languages divide the continuum of possible places of articulation in different ways (Ladefoged & Zongji Wu 1984) is likely a good basis to discuss phonetic and phonological diversity. This would also account for the reason why there does not seem to be any universal basis for the inventory of phonetic segments in the world’s languages (Port & Leary 2005). Data from the world’s languages force us to admit that a complex language-specific, many-to-many relationship exists between the phonological specification and the phonetic facts of a language. There is no way in which phonological features can be associated with simple phonetic scales. It is impossible to specify all the phonetic aspects of languages if we limit each phonological feature to denoting values on a single physical scale. This question is a major challenge to understand the diversity of phonetic and phonological systems.

Taking into consideration a continuous time model, anatomical constraints, discrete gestures, their acoustic consequences and categorization provide a good way to explain some of the phonetic and phonological diversity found in the world’s languages.

Didier Demolin
Gipsa-lab, Université de Grenoble, Alpes

 

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