[Corpora-List] Haida shows the least use of labial consonants in speech

[Yuri Tambovtsev]

Dear Corpora colleagues, I have computed the Haida Indian texts. I came across a new encounter in my detective story of investigating the occurrence of labial consonants in AmerIndian texts. It has the lowest use of labials - 1.70% only. As I said earlier I expected the labial consonants to have a very small share of the Cocopa speech sound chain since there are only 3 labials in Cocopa [p, w, m]. So, I thought that they would take only 4% or 5% like in Navaho (4.15%) or Iquito (4.83%). To my great surprise the Cocopa labials take 18.69%, i.e. like Odjibwa (17.14%) or Apinaye (17.40%). Therefore, Cocopa has one of the highest concentration of labial consonants in its speech sound chain. However in Haida the same 3 labials give only 1.70% in the Haida speech sound chain. It is the smallest use of labials I found in 168 world languages. I wonder, if it is a typological similarity or it shows some genetical relatedness? I wonder who can tell me why Haida uses so little labials? I guess that the great typological difference in the use of labials can speak for the great genetical difference in AmerIndian languages. Looking forward to hearing from you to my new email address yutamb at mail.ru  Remain yours sincerely Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia yutamb at mail.ru 
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