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

[Ian Maddieson]

Hi all,

There’s a chapter on these issues in Maddieson 1986 Patterns of Sounds based on the UPSID 317 language sample.

In the LAPSyD sample of 776 languages, looking for symbols, there are 721 languages with /i/, 709 with /a/, 655 with /u/,
528 with /o/, 491 with /e/ 304 with /ɛ/, and 271 with /ɔ/. Front /i, ɛ/ occur in more languages than their back counterparts
/u, ɔ/, but back /o/ occurs in more languages than /e/. This is because the highest back vowel in a significant number of
languages — mostly with small vowel inventories — is not high but mid. 

Searching on features, 736 languages have a high front unrounded vowel, 733 a low central vowel, 674 a high 
back rounded vowel, 551 a higher mid or unspecified mid back rounded vowel 516 a higher mid or unspecified 
mid front unrounded, 313 a lower mid front unrounded vowel, and 285 have a lower mid back rounded vowel.  
Naturally these reflect the same pattern as noted above but catch some ‘modified’ vowel cases, etc.

In almost all languages with good frequency data, either from text or lexical counts, /a/ (or [ɐ]) is the most
frequent vowel (if such a vowel is in the inventory). 

Ian Maddieson 

> On Sep 14, 2020, at 10:02, Guillaume Segerer <guillaume.segerer at cnrs.fr> wrote:
> 
> Hello everybody
> 
> I tried a quick search in RefLex (www.reflex.cnrs.fr/Africa <http://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
> 
> <cbhkjlkohacknjdi.png>
> 
> 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 <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> <mailto:sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de> 대신 Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> <mailto:lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> 
>>> *보낸 날짜:* Monday, September 14, 2020 4:18:08 PM 
>>> *받는 사람:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <mailto:lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org> <mailto: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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Ian Maddieson

Department of Linguistics
University of New Mexico
MSC03-2130
Albuquerque NM 87131-0001




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