Revisiting population size vs. phoneme inventory size

Language • Vol/Iss. 88(4) • Linguistic Society of America • • Published In • Pages: 877-893 •
By Moran, Steven, McCloy, Daniel, Wright, Richard

Hypothesis

Higher population sizes are correlated with a higher number of obstruent consonants in a language.

Test

Test NameSupportSignificanceCoefficientTail
Hierarchical Mixed-Effects ModelNot supportedp>.05effect size = .0088UNKNOWN

Variables

Variable NameVariable Type OCM Term(s)
Population SizeIndependentPopulation
Number of obstruent consonantsDependentPhonology