Colloquium New Series No. 116

Some phonological segments (consonants and vowels) are inherently more complex than others: they are more difficult to acquire by children, are first to ‘break down’ in speech language disorders, and tend to be cross-linguistically avoided in phonemic inventories. What causes this complexity? Is it phonological, encoded in cognitive linguistic representations of these sounds? Or is it phonetic, inherent in the physiological, biomechanical, or motor constraints affecting the sounds’ production?

In this talk I will review previous approaches to segmental complexity and present three case studies: Russian consonants with secondary palatal and velar articulations, Malayalam retroflexes, and Eggon (Niger-Congo) labial-velars – based on recent and ongoing phonetic research with my collaborators. I will further argue that systematic experimental investigations of such segments’ phonetic behaviour (vis-à-vis simple segments and consonant clusters) can provide valuable insights into sources and types of segmental complexity.