Testing the Universality of Phonological Generalizations with a Phonetically Specified Segment Database: Results and Limitations

Abstract Linguistic universals are prevalent patterns attributed to natural factors, either arising directly from human biology or from the ecology of language use. Phonological universals relating to segments can be studied using the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID). The nature of the data in this resource is described and some issues in interpreting cross-language uniformities and areal disparities are discussed. As an illustration, the modal number of vowel qualities in language inventories is shown to differ for the set of African languages in UPSID from those of other continents. This difference might be explicable as resulting from different ways of balancing various properties of phonological systems. But the correlation of this distribution with likely patterns of dispersion of ‘modern’ humans leaves open the possibility that the modal number of vowels in non-African languages reflects an inherited property of the parent of these languages.