Re: Phonemes

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 18:42:55 GMT: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

>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.

Rotokas 11, Pirahã allegedly has only 10 (not counting 2 or 3 tones),
while !Xóõ has 141.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme


>
>Why would there be a theoretical maximum?

--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
.

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