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 sonorant consonants in a language.

Test

Test NameSupportSignificanceCoefficientTail
Hierarchical Mixed-Effects ModelNot supportedp>.05effect size = .0100UNKNOWN

Variables

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