dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaSelf-organization of the Sound Inventories: Analysis and Synthesis of the Occurrence and Co-occurrence Networks of Consonants
| Authors | Animesh Mukherjee, Monojit Choudhury, Anupam Basu, Niloy Ganguly |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0610120 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0610120 |
Abstract
The sound inventories of the world's languages self-organize themselves giving rise to similar cross-linguistic patterns. In this work we attempt to capture this phenomenon of self-organization, which shapes the structure of the consonant inventories, through a complex network approach. For this purpose we define the occurrence and co-occurrence networks of consonants and systematically study some of their important topological properties. A crucial observation is that the occurrence as well as the co-occurrence of consonants across languages follow a power law distribution. This property is arguably a consequence of the principle of preferential attachment. In order to support this argument we propose a synthesis model which reproduces the degree distribution for the networks to a close approximation. We further observe that the co-occurrence network of consonants show a high degree of clustering and subsequently refine our synthesis model in order to incorporate this property. Finally, we discuss how preferential attachment manifests itself through the evolutionary nature of language.
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"abstract": "The sound inventories of the world\u0027s languages self-organize themselves\ngiving rise to similar cross-linguistic patterns. In this work we attempt to\ncapture this phenomenon of self-organization, which shapes the structure of the\nconsonant inventories, through a complex network approach. For this purpose we\ndefine the occurrence and co-occurrence networks of consonants and\nsystematically study some of their important topological properties. A crucial\nobservation is that the occurrence as well as the co-occurrence of consonants\nacross languages follow a power law distribution. This property is arguably a\nconsequence of the principle of preferential attachment. In order to support\nthis argument we propose a synthesis model which reproduces the degree\ndistribution for the networks to a close approximation. We further observe that\nthe co-occurrence network of consonants show a high degree of clustering and\nsubsequently refine our synthesis model in order to incorporate this property.\nFinally, we discuss how preferential attachment manifests itself through the\nevolutionary nature of language.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0610120",
"authors": [
"Animesh Mukherjee",
"Monojit Choudhury",
"Anupam Basu",
"Niloy Ganguly"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph"
],
"title": "Self-organization of the Sound Inventories: Analysis and Synthesis of the Occurrence and Co-occurrence Networks of Consonants",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0610120"
},
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