IMPLICATIONAL LAWS
They are the observations about more common and less common speech sounds.
What are they?
And they try to explain why some speech sounds are more common than others. For example: the reason why stops are more common than fricatives.
Because to avoid being misunderstood, speakers may avoid words with difficult sounds (resulting in limited usage).
Why some sounds are more common than others?
The speech sound may disappear from the language entirely (language change).
In addition, sounds that are difficult to produce are not likely to be mastered by children before easier sounds are (acquisition of sounds).
And the acquisition of a less common sound implies that the more common counterpart has already been acquired (sound inventories).
The more common sounds are like an easier version of producing sounds than the less common speech sounds.
How do more common and less common speech sounds differ?
Therefore, speech sounds that are more difficult to produce can create misunderstandings for the listener if there are small mistakes or hesitation.
Alveolar fricatives (/s/, /z/) are more common than pharyngeal fricatives ([ħ] and [ʕ], the “throaty” sounds used in Arabic) because the tip of the tongue is more agile than the back of the tongue; hence alveolar consonants are easier to produce than pharyngeal ones.
Alveolar
Pharyngeal
Aspects of more common and less common speech sounds
Sound Inventories
Frequency and Distribution
Acquisition of Sounds
Sound Change
For each less common sound in the inventory there tends to be a more common sound in the inventory that is very similar to the less common sound, differing in only one or two phonetic features.
features
The implication cannot be reversed.
“More common” and “less common” are used in a relative way.
[s] is less common than [t], but more common than [x].
It is related to the degree to which sounds will be used in a particular language and to the range of distribution of the sounds in the words of the language.
English example
If you try to think of words that contain [ð], you will probably find that your list is limited. Furthermore, [ð] occurs as the last sound in English words less often than [z] does.
Children learning a language acquire the use of more common sounds before they acquire the use of less common ones. Then they substitute more common sounds when trying to say less common sounds.
The acquisition of a relatively less common sound implies that its more common counterpart has already been acquired.
When a kid says [dɪs wᴧn] for this one, he is replacing the relatively less common [ð] with [d], a much more common sound.
If any sound is going to be lost, it is more likely to be a less common one rather than its more common counterpart.
In the Old English pronunciation of the word knight there was a voiceless velar fricative [x] between the vowel and the [t]. This velar fricative was lost (so knight now rhymes with quite).
This type of explanation is circular
The circularity stems from the fact that we distinguished between common and less common sounds by making the observations.
The alternative to this circular form of explanation is to explain the above observations in terms of the communicative nature of language.
Link of the picture:
Made by: Idania Lizbeth Martínez Ramírez