Language variation

[Damien Hall]

Dear Yuri

> I research how the speech souns vary in different 
> languages from the point of view of their occurrence. That is, how many 
> particular phonemes occur in this or that world language. I studied the 
> occurrence of phonemes in the speech chain of some 300 world languages. 
> However, in every language speech sound chain the element vary. I study 
> their variation with the help of the coefficient of variation. I wonder 
> if I could compare my results to some other results of this sort. Who 
> studies the variation of the occurrence speech sounds in different 
> languages now?

If you can get hold of it, you should have a look at work like that of Ian 
Maddieson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Maddieson

and Peter Ladefoged (particularly his 1996 book with Ian Maddieson and his 
2001 sole-authored volume):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ladefoged#Bibliography

> The other question is if it is all right to use the 
> coefficient of variation to study the occurrence of speech sounds?

In order to know what to say about this, I'd need to know more about how 
you calculate the coefficient. I might not be able to say more even then, 
but that would be a start!

Sorry not to be more helpful, but good luck!

Best wishes

Damien Hall

-- 
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
YO10 5DD
UK

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