Re: Phonemes

David Wright Sr. wrote:
>
> What language has the largest known number of phonemes and how many does it
> have?
>
> Has any work ever been done to determine a theoretical maximum?
>
> Thanks for any help that you can give me.

David Crystal gives charts of the largest and smallest inventories in
the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Largest is a Khoisan language
with four or five articulations for each of the clicks, totaling
80-something IIRC; smallest is Rotokas, with 11.

Why would there be a theoretical maximum?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

Relevant Pages

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