Re: Phonemes


"Ruud Harmsen" <realemailseesite13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6v96b11cqakifa33nauj1gid3vif4k75na@xxxxxxxxxx
> 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.

In Khoi-San languages, click consonants can have five influxes or
location of preliminary closure, and many effluxes or accompaniments
associated with the release of the back closure (three or four different
locations, and various manners involving voicing, nasalisation, and
aspiration). Maximally, this gives at least 5 x 4 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 160
possibilities for the clicks alone, though of course no language, even
!Xóõ, uses all of them.

But these big numbers result from the assumption that all these complex
segments are to be analysed as unit phonemes. Some people prefer to
analyse them as clusters. This reduces the number of phonemes to more
usual values.

Before people started counting phonemes in the Khoi-San and Chadic
languages, the North-west Caucasian languages were thought to be world
leaders, with Ubykh the champion at 80. Here there are seven places of
articulation for obstruents, most of which have pharyngalised,
labialised, or palatalised variants, which can be voiced, voiceless,
aspirated, voiced fricative, and unvoiced fricative.

Again, I suppose it would be possible (though probably inappropriate) to
reduce the number of phonemes by analysing some of these as clusters.

You can see that a language which combined clicks with Caucasian-type
secondary articulations would end up with maybe a thousand or two
different phonemes. Even this would be far below the "theoretical
maximum".

John.


.

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