The Organization of Lexicons: a Cross-Linguistic Analysis of Monosyllabic Words
Yang, Shiying; Sanker, Chelsea; Priva, Uriel Cohen · ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst (University of Massachusetts Amherst) · 2018
Lexicons utilize a fraction of licit structures. Different theories predict either that lexicons prioritize contrastiveness or structural economy. Study 1 finds that the monosyllabic lexicon of Mandarin is no more distinctive than a randomly sampled baseline using the phonological inventory. Study 2 finds that the lexicons of Mandarin and American English have fewer phonotactically complex words than the random baseline: Words tend not to have multiple low-probability components. This suggests that phonological constraints can have superadditive penalties for combined violations, consistent with e.g. Albright (ms.).