Revisiting population size vs. phoneme inventory size

In this discussion note we argue against the findings presented in Hay & Bauer 2007, which show a positive correlation between population size and phoneme inventory size. We argue that the positive correlation is an artifact of the authors' statistical technique and biased data set. Using a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language (Baltimore) 2012-12, Vol.88 (4), p.877-893
Main Authors: Moran, Steven, McCloy, Daniel, Wright, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Correlation
Correlations
DISCUSSION NOTE
Ethnolinguistics
Genealogy
Hierarchy
Inventories
Language
Language and languages
Language families
Linguistic change
Linguistic typology
Linguistics
Modeling
Phonemes
Phonemics
Phonetics
Phonology
Population
Population size
Relatedness
Statistical analysis
Typology (Linguistics)
Variation
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Description
Summary:In this discussion note we argue against the findings presented in Hay & Bauer 2007, which show a positive correlation between population size and phoneme inventory size. We argue that the positive correlation is an artifact of the authors' statistical technique and biased data set. Using a hierarchical mixed model to account for genealogical relatedness of languages, and a much larger and more diverse sample of the world's languages, we find little support for population size as an explanatory predictor of phoneme inventory size once the genealogical relatedness of languages is accounted for.*
ISSN:0097-8507
1535-0665
1535-0665
DOI:10.1353/lan.2012.0087