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Predictability Affects Spoken Phonological Systems Indirectly

delete2025-12-20
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Uriel Cohen Priva *
DOI:10.1111/lnc3.70029delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
The last three decades have seen a large increase in attempts to explain phonetic and phonological patterns using information theoretic properties such as frequency and predictability. One recurring theme is the attempt to explain phonetic and phonological weakening as following directly from low information content. I argue that the actuation of weakening processes is not consistent with a direct causal route, but is consistent with indirect causal route in which low information content is causally related only to durational reduction, and that downstream effects of low information content may actually hinder communicative efficiency. These findings contradict the expectations of many authors, including my own, going back at least to Zipf.
Keywords:
causal structure
duration
phonetics
phonology
predictability
sound change
XPF corpus
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Journal

L
Language and Linguistics Compass
IF:
1.6
Papers:
31
Citations:
1.8K

Organization

B
brown university
Scholars:
4.4K
Papers: 2.0K
Citations: 0