dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaRediscovering the Co-occurrence Principles of Vowel Inventories: A Complex Network Approach
| Authors | Animesh Mukherjee, Monojit Choudhury, Shamik RoyChowdhury, Anupam Basu, Niloy Ganguly |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0702056 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0702056 |
Abstract
In this work, we attempt to capture patterns of co-occurrence across vowel systems and at the same time figure out the nature of the force leading to the emergence of such patterns. For this purpose we define a weighted network where the vowels are the nodes and an edge between two nodes (read vowels) signify their co-occurrence likelihood over the vowel inventories. Through this network we identify communities of vowels, which essentially reflect their patterns of co-occurrence across languages. We observe that in the assortative vowel communities the constituent nodes (read vowels) are largely uncorrelated in terms of their features and show that they are formed based on the principle of maximal perceptual contrast. However, in the rest of the communities, strong correlations are reflected among the constituent vowels with respect to their features indicating that it is the principle of feature economy that binds them together. We validate the above observations by proposing a quantitative measure of perceptual contrast as well as feature economy and subsequently comparing the results obtained due to these quantifications with those where we assume that the vowel inventories had evolved just by chance.
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"abstract": "In this work, we attempt to capture patterns of co-occurrence across vowel\nsystems and at the same time figure out the nature of the force leading to the\nemergence of such patterns. For this purpose we define a weighted network where\nthe vowels are the nodes and an edge between two nodes (read vowels) signify\ntheir co-occurrence likelihood over the vowel inventories. Through this network\nwe identify communities of vowels, which essentially reflect their patterns of\nco-occurrence across languages. We observe that in the assortative vowel\ncommunities the constituent nodes (read vowels) are largely uncorrelated in\nterms of their features and show that they are formed based on the principle of\nmaximal perceptual contrast. However, in the rest of the communities, strong\ncorrelations are reflected among the constituent vowels with respect to their\nfeatures indicating that it is the principle of feature economy that binds them\ntogether. We validate the above observations by proposing a quantitative\nmeasure of perceptual contrast as well as feature economy and subsequently\ncomparing the results obtained due to these quantifications with those where we\nassume that the vowel inventories had evolved just by chance.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0702056",
"authors": [
"Animesh Mukherjee",
"Monojit Choudhury",
"Shamik RoyChowdhury",
"Anupam Basu",
"Niloy Ganguly"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph"
],
"title": "Rediscovering the Co-occurrence Principles of Vowel Inventories: A Complex Network Approach",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0702056"
},
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