[Lingtyp] Frequency of front/back, high/mid vowels

[Guillaume Segerer]

Hello everybody

I tried a quick search in RefLex (www.reflex.cnrs.fr/Africa), only on 
the sources that have more than 10,000 lexical entries (there are 7 of 
them). These very limited results don't seem to confirm the hypotheses, 
although there might be some biasses due to morphology (noun classes, 
verbal extensions, etc.). Here are the figures

Best,

Guillaume


Le 14/09/2020 à 10:44, Sebastian Nordhoff a écrit :
> On 9/14/20 10:20 AM, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:
>> Dear Sebastian,
>>
>> Please check phoible.org
>
> Dear Ian,
> phoible seems to confirm hypothesis 2) and 3) for types, but not 1) 
> (numbers are percentages):
>
> i 92        u 88
>   e 61     o 60
>       a 86
>
> (one would have to include ɔ and epsilon where there is no e/o, but I 
> do not know how to do this in the web interface)
>
> Is there any information about tokens? For instance, Spanish has the 
> following token frequencies in texts 
> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frecuencia_de_aparici%C3%B3n_de_letras:
>
> e: 13.68%
> a: 12.53%
> o:  8.68%
> i:  6.25%
> u:  3.93%
>
> So the high vowels /i/ and /u/ are less frequent than the mid vowels 
> /e/ and /o/, disconfirming  hypothesis 2. (This is based on graphemes, 
> but Spanish orthography is sufficiently phonemic).
>
> Best wishes
> Sebastian
>
>
>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ian
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *보낸 사람:* Sebastian Nordhoff <sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de> 대신 
>> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *보낸 날짜:* Monday, September 14, 2020 4:18:08 PM
>> *받는 사람:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org 
>> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> *제목:* [Lingtyp] Frequency of front/back, high/mid vowels
>> Dear list members,
>> do we have any information about the cross-linguistic validity of the
>> following hypotheses?
>>
>> 1) front vowels like /i/, /e/ are more frequent than back vowels like
>> /u/, /o/
>>
>> 2) high vowels like /i/, /u/  are more frequent than mid vowels like
>> /e/, /o/.
>>
>> 3) "corner vowels" /a/, /i/, /u/ are more frequent than anything else.
>>
>> I am interested in information about types (phonemic inventory) as well
>> as tokens (counts in texts).
>>
>> Best wishes and than you for your time
>> Sebastian
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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