Emergence of Sound Systems Through Self-Organisation
Bart de Boer · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2000
This paper describes a model for explaining the emergence and the universal structural tendencies of vowel systems. Both are considered as the result of self-organisation in a population of language users. The language users try to imitate each other and to learn each other's vowel systems as well as possible under constraints of production and perception, while at the same time maximising the number of available speech sounds.