Part II---chapter 7

7. Issues of Phonological Complexity: Statistical Analysis of the Relationship between Syllable Structures, Segment Inventories, and Tone Contrasts / Ian Maddieson

7.1 Introduction & 7.2 Language Sample and Data
1. The use of a large phonological database to test hypotheses about cross-language pattern
2. The development of the hypothesis
3. The humanistic principle that languages are equal in serving communicative demands
4. Principle of equal complexity
5. Languages will undergo adjustments to equalize their overall complexity across different subsystems rejectted by the comparisons conducted in this research
6. Historical processes
7. Processing considerations
8. The properties to be examined
9. The complexity of the maximal syllable structure the language permits
10. The complexity of the tone system
11. The consonant inventory size
12. The vowel-quality inventory size
13. The total vowel-inventory size


7.3 Relationships between variables
1. The basis of comparison:
- When a categorical and a numerical variable are compared, the means of the numerical variable in each category form the basis of comparison
2. The purpose:
- to see if greater complexity on the two variables tends to co-occur
- to see if a compensatory relationship exists
- to if there is no overall trend of either kind.
3. Figure 7.1 the relationship between syllable structure complexity the size of the consonant inventory
4. Analysis variance shows a highly significant effect of syllable category on consonant inventory size all pair wise comparisons are highly significant in a post-hoc comparison
5. A correlation:
- an increase in tone vowel inventory size
the presence of a tone system
6. There is no systematic relationship:
- the number of vowel qualities
- the number of consonants in the inventories of the languages
7. The final comparison:
- the two categorical variables reflecting complexity of syllable structure
8. Tone system:
- tone system complexity does not associate with the complexity of syllable structure; rather the occurrence of complex syllable structure and lower tonal complexity are associated.


7.4 Summary and Discussion of Results
1. in the first three comparison syllable structure is compared with the segment inventory variables
2. Two measures of vowel inventory shows a systematic relationship with syllable complexity.
3. Posthoc comparisons show that only the comparison between none and complex reaches significance
4. The final comparison is between the two categories variables reflecting complexity of syllable structure and tone system