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Re: Phone frequencies

From:R A Brown <ray@...>
Date:Monday, September 8, 2008, 6:53
Eugene Oh wrote:
> I find it very interesting that both Polish and Arabic lack /e/ and /o/. > Although why the graph marked Mandarin as lacking /i/ I have no idea. > /Beijing/ again, anyone?
Weird. I know there are areas of controversy regarding the Mandarin phonemic inventory (e.g. the phonemic status of the series written |x|, |j| and |q| in Pinyin which occur only before [i] or [y]) and of the phonemic status [j] and [w]) - but an analysis that does not give phonemic status to /i/ seems to me somewhat perverse. OK - I see that the third element in _bei_ might be regarded as /j/, but what about the |i| in _jing_? A vocalization of /j/ or what? As I say: weird. [snip]
>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 10:17 PM, Alex Fink <000024@...> wrote: >>> On Sat, 6 Sep 2008 17:46:14 -0400, Logan Kearsley < >> chronosurfer@GMAIL.COM> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> I used to have an IPA table that included the frequency of each phone >>>> among world languages- which phones occur in 90% of all languages, >>>> which phones occur in 80% of languages, which phones occur in only 5% >>>> of languages, etc. But I seem to have lost it, and I can't find >>>> anything like that on line. Anybody know where I could get a table or >>>> a list with frequencies for different phones among world languages? >>> Wouldn't you know it, I was _just_ looking for the very same thing. >> UPSID >>> (the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database) does nearly exactly >> this, >>> and there's an interface to it at >>> http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/upsid.html .
[snip] -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora. [William of Ockham]