Linguistic Typology 2024; aop

Ian Joo* and Yu-Yin Hsu

Phonotacticon: a cross-linguistic
phonotactic database
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2023-0094
Received November 23, 2023; accepted August 17, 2024; published online October 2, 2024

Abstract: Phonotacticon is a cross-linguistic database that contains syllabic

phonotactic information about spoken lects (linguistic varieties), including the
possible forms of the onset, nucleus and coda of each lect, as well as the phonemic
and tonemic inventories. In this paper, we present Phonotacticon 1.0, which
contains the phonotactic profiles of 516 Eurasian lects retrieved from descriptive
literature. The later versions of Phonotacticon will extend beyond Eurasia and will
ultimately cover spoken lects in all macroareas. As an example of the research
potential of this database in future studies, we have generated from Phonotacticon
several descriptive visualizations, such as the distribution of the maximal
onset length, to demonstrate the visually discernible areal distribution of certain
phonotactic patterns.

Keywords: phonotactics; typology; database

1 Introduction
Constructing quantitative typological databases is one of the first crucial steps in
enabling research on quantitative typology. In recent years, we have witnessed
an increase in large-scale databases containing cross-linguistic data in different
linguistic domains, such as morphosyntax (Bickel et al. 2022; Skirgård et al. 2023),
lexical semantics (Rzymski et al. 2020), wordlists (List et al. 2022) and segmental
phonology (Moran and McCloy 2019). Such databases are multipurpose by nature
and have paved the way for diverse data-driven approaches to linguistic diversity
and universals, such as the areality of sound change (Nikolaev 2019), the association
between lexical form and meaning (Blasi et al. 2016), and the correlation between
human physiology and sound systems (Blasi et al. 2019).

*Corresponding author: Ian Joo [tɕʰù.ì.an], Otaru University of Commerce, Otaru, Japan,
E-mail: [email protected]. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7678-1227
Yu-Yin Hsu[ɕy²¹.jou⁵¹.jin²¹⁴], The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong,
E-mail: [email protected]. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4087-4995

Open Access. © 2024 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2 Joo and Hsu

The most fruitful type of typological database that has been developed at present
is the phonological database. As we will show in Section 2, most of the existing
phonological databases have focused on coding the phonemic inventories of
different lects. (LECT refers to any level of linguistic variety, commonly referred to as a
DIALECT or a LANGUAGE). While the phonemic inventory is undoubtedly an essential part
of a lect’s phonology, it remains a small subset of the entire phonological profile of a
lect, which includes other patterns, such as phonotactic constraints that determine
how these phonemes can be distributed in relation to one another.
In order to codify a wider set of phonological patterns into a database, we have
constructed the first version of PHONOTACTICON, a database that consists of the syllabic
phonotactic information of spoken lects.1 Phonotacticon includes the following
information about each lect:
– Phonemic inventory (the list of distinctive sound units);
– Tonemes (the list of distinctive tone patterns);
– Onset forms (the list of one or more phonemes that precede the peak of a syllable);
– Nucleus forms (the list of one or more phonemes that form the peak of a syllable);
and
– Coda forms (the list of one or more phonemes that follow the peak of a syllable).

While the above information certainly does not cover the entirety of the phonotactic
rules of a lect, it does provide comprehensive data on what segments may fill in each
of the three slots of a syllable. Phonotacticon allows us to capture phonological
diversity that is not only based on the phonemes that are present in each lect, but also
based on their distributional characteristics.
The first version of Phonotacticon, or PHONOTACTICON 1.0, covers 516 lects that are
spoken in the Eurasian macroarea. In this paper, we will briefly review existing
phonological databases (Section 2), explain the construction of Phonotacticon 1.0
(Sections 3-4), and present some descriptive visualizations to indicate what the
database can do (Section 5). The paper concludes with suggestions for future research
based on Phonotacticon (Section 6).

2 Literature review
As we mentioned, many cross-linguistic phonological databases are currently avail-
able, each of them with a different scope of encoded information and a different range
of sample lects. Table 1 summarizes seven of the major phonological databases that are
currently available. “Size” refers to the number of described lects in each database.

1 Available at zenodo.org/records/10623743.
 Phonotacticon 3

Table : Seven existing phonological databases.

Name Size Containing

PBase (Mielke )  Inventory, phonological rules, phonotactics

UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database  Inventory
(UPSID, Maddieson )
Lyon-Albuquerque Phonological Systems Database  Inventory, syllable, suprasegmental
(LAPSyd, Maddieson a)
The Database of Eurasian Phonological Inventories  Inventory, phonotactics of Eurasian lects
(EURPhon, Nikolaev )
PHOIBLE . (Moran and McCloy ) , Inventory
SegBo (Grossman et al. )  Borrowed segments
BDPROTO . (Moran et al. )  Inventory of proto- and ancient lects

Many quantitative typological studies have been made possible based on these
databases. Topics investigated include the areal patterns of consonant phonemes in
Eurasia (Nikolaev 2019), the diachronic changes of consonants and vowels across
different language families (Moran et al. 2021), and the influence of climate on
phonemic inventories (Maddieson and Benedict 2023). A meta-analysis measuring
the variance between different databases was also conducted (Anderson et al. 2023),
signaling that the databases can significantly differ in the phonological description of
the same sample lects, due to the difference in the consulted descriptive works and in
how the compilers of each database interpreted those works. This highlights the
importance of the coexistence of multiple databases to allow secondary studies to
cross-validate their hypotheses using different sources.
Although the number of phonological databases available is growing, there is
still a need for a more detailed phonotactic database. While EURPhon (Nikolaev
2018), PBase (Mielke 2008), and LAPSyd (Maddieson et al. 2013) contain different
levels of phonotactic information, their information on syllabic phonotactics is
relatively limited. In order to fill this gap, Phonotacticon 1.0 contains detailed
information on the possible forms of onset, nucleus, coda in 516 sample lects,
providing full segmental information when possible. The next section explains how
the 516 lects were sampled.

3 Lect sampling
The 516 sample lects are the lects listed in Glottolog 4.4 (Hammarström et al. 2021), a
cross-linguistic bibliographical database, that fulfill the following criteria:
4 Joo and Hsu

– A living spoken “language” (as defined by Glottolog);2

– whose Macroarea is classified as “Eurasia”; and
– whose “Most Extensive Description” as defined by Glottolog is a “long grammar”
(i.e. a lect that has at least one lengthy reference grammar published); and
– which had at least one appropriate source accessible to us (see Section 4.4).

The macroarea “Eurasia” as defined here is the same as the Eurasian continent but
excludes most southern Pacific islands typically considered to be part of Eurasia,
such as Taiwan or Borneo. This macroarea is defined by Hammarström and Donohue

Figure 1: 516 sample lects of phonotacticon.

2 Sign lects were not included in the database, as they have distinct phonological systems that cannot
be directly compared to spoken phonology.
 Phonotacticon 5

(2014), whose goal was “to come up with a list of objectively predefined areas that can
be used as normative controls in cross-linguistic work” (p. 185). Their delimitation of
macroareas was purely driven by geographical contiguity (defined by the lack
of water body separating landmasses) and not by linguistic genealogy or cultural
history. The southern Pacific islands, such as Taiwan, Borneo or the Philippines,
are classified as “Papunesia”, except for Hainan, which is separated only by a very
thin strait from continental China. Some islands that are too small to be reflected in
the resolution of Hammarström and Donohue’s study are interpreted as part of a
bigger landmass. For example, Ryukyu islands were too small to be reflected in the
resolution and were grouped together as the Japanese archipelago, even though
some Ryukyu islands are very close to Taiwan.
We limited the sample lects into those having at least one “long grammar”
according to Glottolog 4.4. While this choice facilitates the access to the descriptive
literature, it biases the samples towards more richly described linguistic families or
areas compared to less described ones, as one reviewer pointed out.
The distribution of the 516 sample lects is visualized in Figure 1, where each
color-shape combination represents a family. Each of these lects is represented by its
phonological profile in the database, which we will explain in the next section.

4 Phonological profile
Phonotacticon consists of the following phonotactic profile of each of the 516
Eurasian lects:
– Phonemic inventory (segmental)
– Tones
– Onset forms
– Nucleus forms
– Coda forms

Table 2 provides an example of the phonological profile of A’ou [aoua1234]

(Tai-Kadai; Li et al. 2014). <#> refers to empty onset or coda.

Table : Phonological profile of A’ou.

Phoneme p t k q ʔ ph th kh qh d ts͡ tɕ͡ tsʰ

͡ tɕʰ
͡ mnŋlɭfsɬɕχhvzʑɣʁwjaeiɯɔuɤəo
Tone    
Onset p t k q ʔ ph th kh qh d ts͡ tɕ͡ tsʰ
͡ tɕʰ
͡ m n ŋ l ɭ f s ɬ ɕ χ h v z ʑ ɣ ʁ w j pl bl vl ml
Nucleus a e i z ɔ u ai ei ui əu aɯ əɯ iu ɤu ia ie iɔ ua iau iəɯ iəu uai uau uəɯ uei
Coda #nŋ
6 Joo and Hsu

How were the five variables chosen? The first two variables, the phonemic
inventory and tonemes, are arguably the most basic information of a lect’s
phonology, as they are present in most of the phonological databases presented
in Section 2.
The remaining three variables, onset, nucleus, and coda forms, were selected
because they form the building units of a SYLLABLE, which is a concept employed by the
majority of the phonological analyses of different lects (van der Hulst and Ritter 1999;
Goldsmith 2011). An alternative to the syllable would be the notion of WORD, as many
phonological analyses describe a lect’s phonotactic patterns based on
word boundaries, such as word-initial or word-final consonant clusters, rather than
syllable boundaries. But previous works on wordhood do not agree on what a
phonological or prosodic word is, and many suggest that it is not a cross-linguistically
consistent concept (Dixon and Aikhenvald 2003; Schiering et al. 2010). But as the
reviewers of this manuscript pointed out, deciding whether to frame the database
on syllables or words is ultimately a matter of preference, without any assumption
of the theoretical superiority of one over the other. Moreover, when a descriptive
grammar provides only word boundary information and no syllable boundary
information, we resorted to word boundary information to retrieve syllable
boundary information (Section 4.2).

4.1 Phonemic inventory

The phonemic inventory part of each lect’s profile contains the segmental phonemes
of the lect. Since Phonotacticon is a phonological database and not a phonetic
database, it only lists phonemes as members of the phonemic inventory, excluding its
possible allophones.
One challenge of transcribing phonemes using the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA) is the overspecification of articulatory features. A phoneme is
“a combination of certain (simultaneous and/or successive) features, leaving other
features unspecified” (Chao 1934: 373). The IPA, on the other hand, is an alphabet
representing the articulatory possibilities of human speech. As such, every IPA
consonant symbol specifies the articulatory place, manner, and phonation of the
consonant it represents. The problem arises when a phonologist has to transcribe
the nasal phonemes of a lect using the symbols <m n ŋ>, which represent voiced
nasal consonants, even when the lect do not specify the feature [+voice] in their
nasal phonemes. Thus, using <m n ŋ> to transcribe nasal phonemes that do not
specify voicedness is technically an overspecification. Transcribing nasal
consonants as <m n ŋ> may be based on the fact that they are articulated as voiced in
most environments, but that would be transcribing their (most common) phonetic
 Phonotacticon 7

surface forms and not the combinations of their phonological features, which is the
definition of a phoneme. As van der Hulst (2017) puts it, “IPA symbols are mere
shorthand for feature representations” (p. 41) and not equivalent to the feature
representations. Nevertheless, for pragmatic purposes, every phoneme is defined
as an IPA symbol in Phonotacticon.
Most of the time, a phoneme is described in the consulted literature as having
a single underlying form that can be transcribed as an IPA symbol. But rarely, a
phoneme is described as consisting of several allophones, without a single under-
lying form. In such cases, we judge which allophone represents the underlying form
based on which one appears in the most unmarked environments. If there is a form
in isolation, then that form is chosen as the representing segment. An example is
Japanese moraic nasal /N/, which may occur as [n], [mː], [Nː] or others depending on
phonotactic context (Iwasaki 2013). /N/ occurs as [Nː] when it does not precede any
segment (e.g. san さん [sɑ̃Nː] ‘three’), so we have transcribed it as /Nː/.
If there is absolutely no reason to prefer one allophone over another, then we
choose the one that appears first in the cited literature. For example, if a phoneme is
described as <s/ʃ>, without specifying whether /s/ or /ʃ/ represents the underlying
form, and there is no reason to believe one is more unmarked than the other, then it
is transcribed in Phonotacticon as <s>.
Archiphonemes – phonemes that have other phonemes as their allophones – are
generally treated as equivalent to their allophonic phonemes. Tuvinian [tuvi1240]
archiphoneme /I/ can be realized as /i/, /y/, /ɯ/, or /u/, all of which are phonemic
in Tuvinian, based on vowel harmony: /àth-I/ > [àtɯ] ‘his horse’; /khyç-I/ > [khyʝy]
‘his strength’ (Anderson and Harrison 1999: 4). In this case, /I/ is treated as equivalent
to the phonemes /i y ɯ u/, without being coded as a separate phoneme.
Another problem to be addressed is the XENOPHONE, a phoneme that only occurs in
loanwords (coined by Eklund and Lindström 1998). The main complication is that the
status of a xenophone can vary from fully nativized to extremely marginal and it can
sometimes be difficult to judge whether a xenophone is truly a part of a given lect’s
phonology. Some xenophones are indistinctively part of a lect’s phonology, such as
German /ʒ/, while some xenophones are distinctively foreign, such as German nasal
vowels, which remain unstable and are often replaced by native phonemes (Wiese
2000: 12). Thus, whether a xenophone forms a part of the phonology of a lect is
essentially a gray area, leaving us with the question of which xenophones to record
in the database and which ones to leave out.
In Phonotacticon, we have included the xenophones as part of the phonemic
inventory (and consequently, part of the onset, nucleus, or coda forms) if they are
considered to be an integral part of a lect’s phonology by the consulted literature.
This is mostly inferred from how general a statement is regarding the status of
xenophone within a lect’s phonology. For instance, if a grammar simply writes “X is a
8 Joo and Hsu

phoneme of this lect” or lists it in within the phonemic inventory table, then we take
that to mean that that grammar considers X to be an integral part of the phonemic
inventory. On the other hand, if the grammar writes a statement in the lines of “in
addition to the above-listed phonemes, X only occurs in some loanwords”, then we
assume that the grammar does not consider it to be an integral part of the phonology.
As ambiguous as this strategy of tone-reading can be, it is arguably an appropriate
approach to the status of xenophones which is by nature ambiguous. Furthermore,
we have excluded xenophones that occur only in certain varieties of the lect and/or
are freely variable with native phonemes, such as the German nasal vowels.
Phonemes that are used by only a portion of the whole speaker population of a
given lect have been excluded as well: we have only included phonemes that are used
by all or most speakers. An exception to this rule is that phonemes used by older
generations but not by younger generations have been included, due to the fact that
younger generations generally reflect the ongoing change of a lect and it is not
appropriate to fully reflect an ongoing change as if it were already complete.
In cases where the source describes a sociolinguistic distinction between
prescriptive “educated” speech and real-life “colloquial” speech, we have generally
chosen the latter as better reflecting the phonology of a given lect.
When transcribing the phonemes based on a reference grammar, we relied first
and foremost on the articulatory description of that phoneme rather than its
orthographic transcription. If a phoneme is transcribed as <c> but described as
“voiceless palatal affricate”, then we transcribed it as /c͡ç/ (which is the voiceless
palatal affricate) rather than the verbatim /c/ (which is the voiceless palatal stop).
All transcribed phonemes are those found in the PanPhon database (Mortensen
et al. 2016, as of 23 July 2020). In other words, phonemes that are not found in
PanPhon are transcribed in a way that fits PanPhon. The reason for this alignment
between Phonotacticon and PanPhon is to make all segments in Phonotacticon
machine-readable via PanPhon and convertible into featural values, hence allowing
immediate computational analysis. To align the two databases, some theoretical
sacrifices have been made. In the case of diphthongs, PanPhon does not include
diphthongs (or triphthongs) as independent segments, even though some grammars
argue that a diphthong forms an independent phoneme in the described lect. Hence,
even if a diphthong phoneme of a lect consists of two vowels that are not found as
monophthongs in that lect, those two vowels nevertheless occur in Phonotacticon as
individual phonemes, contrary to the grammar’s description. For example, if a
grammar describes a lect as having /ɛ͡ɪ/ as a diphthong phoneme while not having /ɛ/
or /I/ as monophthong phonemes, we have still listed /ɛ/ and /I/ as phonemes instead
of /ɛ͡ɪ/.
This approach is beneficial to the database, since it not only allows it to be
compatible with PanPhon, but also because it avoids the highly controversial
 Phonotacticon 9

nature of the status of diphthongs as individual phonemes. For example, whether

diphthongs in a given lect constitute individual phonemes or are combinations of two
vowel phonemes is a matter of debate (Berg 1986; Pike 1947; Eliasson 2022) and is thus
highly subject to theoretical bias. Another problem is that most reference grammars
do not explicitly address this question. Very few grammars –in our experience –
discuss whether a diphthong in a lect has phonemic status or not. Many descriptive
grammars simply provide a list of monophthongs and diphthongs without specifying
whether the diphthongs are sequences of phonemes or independent phonemes. By
listing all diphthongs as combinations of monophthong phonemes, we can make all
the vowel phonemes compatible with PanPhon and allow cross-linguistic analysis,
albeit at the sacrifice of favoring one theoretical approach to diphthongs over
another. Moreover, regardless of the phonemic status of diphthongs and triphthongs,
they are still listed in the nucleus part of the database, so there is no sacrifice at the
descriptive level.
Exceptionally, we have made the following changes to PanPhon:3
– The features [hitone] and [hireg] were excluded, since they only pertain to tones
and not segments.
– We included prenasalized and preaspirated segments, as these concepts are
employed by quite a few grammars but absent in PanPhon. Their features
are identical to the nasal and aspirated equivalents, except that prenasalized
segments are assigned 0 value to the [nasal, sonorant] features and preaspirated
segments are assigned 0 value to the [constricted glottis] feature. The
prenasalized consonants are transcribed with <n> followed by a segment (<nb>,
<nd>), whereas preaspirated consonants are transcribed as <h> followed by a
tie bar and a segment (<hp͡ >, <ht͡ >).
– We included the FORTIS (or TENSE) counterpart of all consonants, transcribed by
the segmented followed by a small plus sign, as this concept is employed in works
on Korean (Lee 2021), Swiss German (Fleischer and Schmid 2006), or other lects
but not present in PanPhon. The feature of each fortis consonant is identical to its
non-fortis counterpart, except that its [tense] feature is 1 and not 0.
– Some segments that we judge to be missing as accidental gaps were added. For
example, /ts͡ ’wː/ is absent in PanPhon, even though /ts͡ ’ː/ and /ts͡ ’w/ are present. As
such cases are clearly gaps created by mistake, we added such segments in with
appropriate feature values.

As different phonological databases offer different featural parameters and values

per segment, users may convert the IPA segments of Phonotacticon into featural
values using databases other than PanPhon, such as PHOIBLE (Moran and McCloy

3 The revised version of PanPhon is available at zenodo.org/records/10623743.

10 Joo and Hsu

2019) or the Cross-Linguistic Transcription Systems (Rubehn et al. 2024), although

they may not cover every segment in Phonotacticon.
In some cases, a source may specify only a certain class of segments as part of a
permissible sequence of phonemes. For example, the source may indicate that a
plosive plus a liquid may form an onset cluster, without specifying whether all
logically possible combinations of plosive + liquid are permitted in the onset position.
In such cases, we have used capital letters to describe the permitted sequence
without specifying the segments: PL for plosive (P) plus liquid (L).
Table 3 shows the capital letters used to represent underspecified segments and
how they are defined in terms of features and/or graphemes. <j, w, ɥ, ɰ> means any
segment including any one of these graphemes in its IPA symbol. !<h, ɦ> means any
segment not having these graphemes in its IPA symbol. Other than V, which stands
for vowels, all the capital letters represent consonants or glides: N refers to nasal
consonants and glides only, and excludes nasalized vowels.
Many grammars published in China that describe monosyllabic lects do not
describe the lect’s phonemic inventory in terms of segmental phonemes but rather
in terms of INITIALS (SHENGMU 聲母)and FINALS (YUNMU 韵母), which correspond to onsets
and rhymes. When consulting such grammars, we have interpreted the description

Table : The underspecified segments.

Symbol Class Features Graphemes

B Bilabial [+cons, +lab]

C Consonant [+cons]
Č Affricate [+cons, +delrel, -son]
D Oral [-nas, -syl]
F Fricative [+cons, +cont, -son]
G Glide <j, w, ɥ, ɰ>
K Coronal [+cons, +cor]
Ł Lateral [+cons, +cor, +lat]
L Liquid [+cons, +cont, +cor, +son]
M Geminate [+cons] identical to the previous
N Nasal [+nas, -syl]
P Plosive [+cons, -cont, -delrel, -son]
R Sonorant [+cont, +son, -syl] !<h, ɦ>
S Sibilant [+cons, +cont, +cor, -son]
T Obstruent [+cons, -son]
V Vowel [-cons, +cont, +son, +syl]
W Voiced [-syl, +voi]
X Voiceless [-syl, -voi]
Z Continuant [+cont, -syl]
 Phonotacticon 11

in terms of phonemes. For example, if a grammar of a lect describes it as having

initials /p-, t-, k-/ and finals /-a, -i, -u, -an, -in, -un/, we have interpreted that as a
phonemic inventory of /p, t, k, n, a, i, u/.
All geminates are considered to be consonant sequences and not independent
phonemes unless the literature explains why they are independent phonemes.

4.2 Onset, nucleus, and coda forms

The onset, nucleus, and coda sections of Phonotacticon describe the possible onset,
nucleus and coda forms of a given lect. They consist of phonemes listed in the
phonemic inventory section, as singleton phonemes or a sequence of phonemes.
An exception is the OBLIGATORY EPENTHETIC PHONES, which may not be present in the
phonemic inventory section but may be present in the onset, nucleus or coda
sections. For example, Bantawa [bant1281] (Sino-Tibetan) does not have a glottal stop
as a phoneme, but does have it as an epenthetic phone to fill in the obligatory onset
slot (Doornenbal 2009). In this case, <ʔ> was transcribed in the onset section of
Bantawa. Epenthetic phones that are only optionally inserted were not included. The
null onset and the null coda are represented as <#> in the onset and the coda sections.
Some grammars list word-initial, word-medial, and word-final consonant
clusters instead of consonant clusters in onset and coda position. In such cases, we
have interpreted the data as follows:
– Word-initial clusters are interpreted as onset clusters.
– Word-final clusters are interpreted as coda clusters.
– Word-medial clusters are interpreted as onset consonants, coda consonants, or
the mixture of both. If the grammar does not state the syllable boundary that
divides a word-medial cluster, we have located the syllable boundary according
to the following principles:
– If a cluster occurs word-initially or word-finally, then we favored the inter-
pretation that it also exists in a word-medial cluster. For example, if /lp/ occurs
word-finally, then the medial cluster /lpt/ would be interpreted as /lp.t/, instead
of /l.pt/, given that /pt/ does not occur word-initially.
– If a medial cluster does not contain sequences that appear as initial
clusters or final clusters, then we favored the interpretation that reflects
the sonority sequencing principle (Clements 1990). The sonority
sequencing principle is here defined as the normative sequence of
vowel > glide > liquid > nasal > obstruent in relation to the vicinity to the
nucleus. For example, if /lp/ does not occur word-finally and /pt/ does not
occur word-initially, then the medial cluster /lpt/ would be interpreted as
/lp.t/ rather than /l.pt/, because /Vlp/ reflects the sonority sequencing
12 Joo and Hsu

principle (vowel – liquid – obstruent), whereas /ptV/ does not (obstruent –

obstruent – vowel). Not reflecting the sonority sequencing principle is
preferable to violating it: For example, /mmp/ would be interpreted as
/mm.p/, since /Vmm/ does not reflect but does not violate the sequencing
principle (vowel - nasal - nasal), whereas /mpV/ violates it (nasal –
obstruent – vowel).
– If a medial cluster contains both an initial cluster and a final cluster, or if a
medial cluster does not contain sequences that appear as onset or coda, and if
multiple possible interpretations reflect the sonority sequencing principle,
then we resorted to the maximal onset principle (Kahn 1976), favoring
complex onsets over complex codas. For example, if /pl/ is an initial cluster
and /lp/ is a final cluster, /lpl/ would be interpreted as /l.pl/, instead of /lp.l/.
– For triconsonantal or longer medial clusters, we applied the maximal onset
principle within the length of the initial cluster. For example, for a medial
cluster /lpml/, we can divide it into /l.pml/ if a three-consonant cluster is
attested word-initially. But if only two-consonant clusters are attested as
onset, we can only divide it into /lp.ml/.
– Some works (such as Riad 2013) only list word-initial and word-final
clusters and do not list word-medial clusters. In such cases, we interpreted
the word-initial and word-final clusters as the same as onset and coda
clusters.

As a reviewer pointed out, this approach of interpreting word-based data into

syllabic information, rather than directly listing word-based data into the database,
may have compromised the rawness and theory-neutrality of the database. But we
argue that such interpretation is an essential part of the database, whose goal is to
provide the syllabic phonotactic information of each lect, based on the (often
incomplete) data provided by the literature. Additionally, we would like to point out
that many grammars do directly provide syllabic information. It is only when a
grammar did not do this that we had to resort to this interpretation algorithm.
In some cases, a given set of phonemes may be described as permitted in a given
position of a sequence. For example, a source may indicate that /p t k s/ may precede /l
r w j/ to form a biconsonantal onset cluster, without specifying whether all the
4 × 4 = 16 logically possible combinations are actually attested. In such cases, we have
used square brackets to denote ANY ONE OF THE PHONEMES WITHIN THIS BRACKET: [ptks][lrwj] to
mean ANY ONE OF /p t k s/ FOLLOWED BY ANY ONE OF /l r w j/.
If a consonant is described as occurring word-initially or as an onset, then we
assumed that it can occur alone as a single onset. Technically, this may not always be
the case, as a consonant may occur word-initially in the onset position as the initial
part of a cluster and not on its own (for example, /s/ occurring in /spV/ only and not in
 Phonotacticon 13

/sV/). But unless stated otherwise, we assumed that its occurrence in word-initial or
onset position implies its occurrence as a single onset. The same rule applies for
word-final and/or coda consonants.
Often, a grammar does not mention whether an onset is obligatory in a syllable.
If we detected at least one syllable without an onset, then we judged that that lect
does not oblige an onset.
If the literature does not mention syllabic consonants, then we assumed that the
syllable requires at least one vowel.

4.2.1 Allophonic variation

A phoneme is only listed at a position of a syllable when it is distinctive in that

position, i.e. not neutralized with another phoneme. For example, Korean /t/ and /s/
neutralizes in coda position as [t̚ ]. One could say that the Korean /s/ is present in coda
position, realized as its allophone [t̚ ]. But because it is not distinctive with /t/ in that
position and [t̚ ] is phonetically closer to [t] than it is to [s], we have listed /t/ as a
possible Korean coda but not /s/.

4.2.2 Other rules on segmental transcription

– Dental consonants are transcribed with the dental diacritic (e.g. /t̪ d̪ /) only when
it is minimally contrastive with alveolar correspondents. Otherwise they are
transcribed without the dental diacritic (e.g. /t d/).
– Quite often, <r> is presented as a “liquid” consonant without any specification
about its manner or place of articulation. In the absence of additional details, we
have transcribed it as /r/.
– The two vowel symbols <ɿ> and <ʅ> that frequently appear in grammars written
in China have been interpreted as syllabic consonants /z̩ / and /ʐ̩ /, respectively.
– The alveolo-palatal nasal, transcribed as <ȵ> in grammars written in China, are
transcribed as the palatal nasal <ɲ> unless it is contrastive with the palatal nasal.
– Some grammars (e.g. Gowda 1968) treat vowel nasalization as a suprasegmental
phoneme rather than treating nasal vowels as phonemes. For theoretical
consistency, we have interpreted all such cases as independent nasal vowel
phonemes.
– Often, a source describes a diphthong as a VV or a GV/VG sequence without
specifying whether it occurs within the nucleus or crosses the onset-nucleus or
nucleus-coda boundary. Unless stated otherwise, we have assumed that the
segments transcribed as vowels, such as /i/ in /ia/ or /ai/, occur within the nucleus,
while the segments transcribed as glides, such as /j/ in /ja/ or /aj/, occur in onset or
coda position.
14 Joo and Hsu

– Arabic “emphatic” consonants are transcribed as pharyngealized (<Cˤ>) unless

specified otherwise.
– Voiced aspirated obstruents (/bh dh ɡh …/) are transcribed as breathy obstruents
( /b̤ d̤ ɡ̤ …/ ).

4.3 Tonemes

Tones are transcribed in capital letters (H, M, L, F, R, or any combination of these) or

Chao letters (1 to 5 or any combination of these). For example, a high rising tone may
be transcribed as HR in capital letters or 35 in Chao letters. If a grammar employs
Chao letters, then the Chao letters are transcribed verbatim in Phonotacticon. If a
grammar uses other means of description, then the tones are transcribed in capital
letters. If a lect has no tones, then the absence of tones is marked with <->.
As a rule, the tones are transcribed in terms of pitch (level or contour) unless
a toneme is not distinguishable by pitch only. A toneme often has acoustic cues
other than pitch, such as length and phonation. Only when two tonemes are only
distinguished by non-pitch cues have we transcribed the non-pitch information in
Phonotacticon: <ˀ> for creaky voice, <C> for checked tones, and <h> for aspiration. For
example, Burmese tones are transcribed as L (low), Hˀ (high creaky), and Hh (high
aspirated) (based on Jenny and Hnin Tun 2016).
In some cases, a tone may be described as having more than one allotones, rather
than one single underlying form. In those cases, the allotones are transcribed and
separated by slashes. For example, the three tones of Asho Chin [asho1236] are
transcribed as <55, 44, 22/11> (based on Zakaria 2018).
Many grammars of atonal lects do not specifically mention the absence of tone.
If the cited literature does not mention tone, then we have assumed that the lect has
no tone.

4.4 Bibliographical sources

The database includes the bibliographical information of the source consulted

for each lect’s profile. The sources are either the “long grammars” as defined by
Glottolog 4.4 or any other source we deem relevant and accessible. As most
reference grammars are very long, we did not read each grammar in its entirety
(including syntax, morphology and other sections), but rather focused on its
phonology section. The consulted phonological data were then transcribed
manually into Phonotacticon.
 Phonotacticon 15

The accessibility issue includes language barriers as well. In most cases,

including when the sources were written in French, German, Japanese, or Chinese,
this was not a concern, as we could read those lects. In some cases when we could
not read the lect a source was written in very well, such as Russian or Finnish, we
read it with the aid of machine translation.

4.5 Note

In cases where further clarification is needed regarding how we retrieved the

information from the cited source, we left a brief note in plain words in addition to
the phonotactic profile.

4.6 Missing information

All the sample lects have, at the very least, its phonemic inventory transcribed.
In some cases, the only accessible source did not provide any information on
onsets/nuclei/codas. In case where this information was missing, we filled the slot
with the symbol <?>. A total of 59 out of the 516 sample lects have no information
about their onsets/nuclei/codas.

5 Descriptive visualizations
So far, we have introduced how Phonotacticon 1.0 has been developed. Considering
that it is the first database containing the possible onset, nucleus and coda forms of a
sizeable number of lects, we would like to present the possibilities this database can
bring. In the following sections, we introduce some visualizations generated from
Phonotacticon and discuss areal patterns observable from them.

5.1 Syllable length

In this section, we visualize the distribution of SYLLABLE LENGTH in Eurasia. By syllable

length we mean the number of segments (phonemes or epenthetic phones) that fill in
the one of these three slots. For example, English permits up to three consonants in
its onset position (/strit/ street, /splæʃ/ splash), three vowels in its nucleus position
(/faIə/ fire, /aʊə/ hour), and four consonants in its coda position (/teksts/ texts,
/ɡlImpst/ glimpsed) (Gut 2009). English, and European lects in general, allow longer
16 Joo and Hsu

onsets, nuclei and codas compared to other lects in the world. Hokkaido Ainu, for
instance, allows only one segment in each of the three positions, its maximal syllable
being CVC (Tamura 2000: 21).
To our knowledge, Maddieson (2013b) is the only work so far to have provided a
typological overview of syllable length. Maddieson divides 486 lects worldwide into
three categories based on their syllabic complexity: SIMPLE (maximal syllable is CV),
MODERATELY COMPLEX (maximal syllable is CCVC where the onset CC is stop + glide or
stop + liquid), and COMPLEX (onsets can be clusters other than stop + glide/liquid and
codas can be complex). He reports that ca. 56 % of the sample lects have a moderately
complex syllable structure, ca. 30.9 % have a complex syllable structure, and ca.
12.5 % have a simple syllable structure. His data show that within Eurasia, East and
Southeast Asian lects tend to allow moderately complex syllable structures, whereas
complex syllable structures dominate elsewhere.
Maddieson’s overview, based on a ternary division based on syllable length,
while by itself helpful, calls for a further analysis with finer resolution. The following
figures provide such an analysis based on gradient values of onset, nucleus, and coda
lengths.
Figure 2 shows the maximal length of an onset in the sample lects, in terms of the
number of the phonemes allowed. Caucasus and Eastern Himalayas are zoomed in,
due to the high concentration of lects. What is the most evident is that Eurasia is
largely divided into three areas: North and Northeast Asia generally only permit
singleton onsets, with the notable exception of the Qinghai-Gansu linguistic area
(Dwyer 2013; Janhunen 2006; Xu 2017; Zhou 2020); South and Southeast Asia generally
permit up to bisegmental onsets; and Europe generally permits up to triconsonantal
onsets. The Middle East seems to be the most diverse without a dominant upper limit.

Figure 2: Maximal length of an onset in each lect.

 Phonotacticon 17

As the onset is optional in some lects, the minimal length of onset can be either
zero or one segment in a given lect. Figure 3 shows whether an onset is obligatory in
each lect. We see that the obligatory onset is mostly present in the Mainland
Southeast Asian linguistic area (Enfield 2018; Sidwell and Jenny 2021; Vittrant and
Watkins 2019) and the Middle East. All sample lects that mandate an onset in a
syllable use the glottal stop [ʔ] as the filler segment to fill in the gap of a syllable that
would otherwise lack an onset. The glottal stop may or may not be a phoneme in such
lects.
Note that even the lects that do not have an obligatory onset filler may have a
non-obligatory filler. English, for example, can insert /ʔ/ in the word-initial position,
but it is certainly not obligatory (occurring about 50 % of the time in British English,
according to Fuchs 2015). Furthermore, the glottal stop is normally not inserted in
word-medial onsets (e.g. A. I. [(ʔ)ɛI.ɑɪ] and not *[(ʔ)ɛI.ʔɑɪ]).
Figure 4 shows the maximal length of nucleus in each of the Eurasian lects.
We see that South, Southwest, and Central Asia tend to not allow complex nuclei,
whereas in other areas, diphthongs or even triphthongs are common. Note that lects
that only permit monosegmental nuclei may also have phonetic diphthongs if glides
appear in their onset or coda position. For instance, according to Bauer and Benedict
(1997: 57), Cantonese diphthongs are not analyzed as vocalic sequences within a

Figure 3: Obligatory onset.

18 Joo and Hsu

nucleus but rather as a vocalic nucleus followed by a consonantal coda, based on the
short duration of the offglides [j] and [w]. Adding to this argument, we can also argue
for the nucleus-external hypothesis based on phonological grounds: if the Cantonese
diphthongs were nucleus-internal, then it would be difficult to explain why they are
not followed by a coda (i.e. *[VVC]). Given the fact that Cantonese only allows one
segment as a coda, the impossibility of an offglide and the coda consonant coexisting
favors the explanation that an offglide is a coda itself.
Figure 5 shows the maximal length of a coda in each lect. The distribution is
very similar to the distribution of maximal onset length shown in Figure 2: European

Figure 4: Maximal length of a nucleus in each lect.

Figure 5: Maximal length of a coda in each lect.

 Phonotacticon 19

lects allow multiple (as long as six) codas, Southwest and South Asian lects allow up to
two, and East Asian lects allow only one. The main difference between onset length
and coda length distributions is that Southeast Asian lects do not allow complex
codas and that several lects in Southwest China do not allow any coda at all. In sum,
we observe a general correlation between onset length and coda length in the
Eurasian macroarea, which both tend to increase westwards.
Figure 6 shows the average maximal length of onset, nucleus, and coda per
each family. We see that generally, language families in western Eurasia, such as
Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic, allow more segments per syllable than language
families in eastern Eurasia, such as Tungusic and Sino-Tibetan.
To confirm our visual observation that the maximal lengths of onset and coda
tend to be longer in western Eurasia compared to eastern Eurasia, we tested whether
the maximal onset and coda lengths are correlated with the longitude of the Eurasian
lects. First, it is necessary to test the spatial autocorrelation, as geographically
neighboring lects may have similar phonotactic patterns. We identified the
geographical neighbors of each lect, defined by lects whose coordinates are within
1,500 km distance of each other. This distance threshold leaves no sample lect
without any neighbor. We then created a weight matrix and assigned the value of

Figure 6: Average maximal length of onset/nucleus/coda by family.

20 Joo and Hsu

1 to each neighboring lect pairs and the value of 0 to each non-neighboring lect pairs.
We also needed to test the genealogical autocorrelation, since lects belonging to the
same family may have similar onset or coda lengths. Similarly to the spatial weight
matrix, we created a genealogical weight matrix where the lect pairs belonging to the
same family were assigned the value of 1. Based on these two weight matrices (spatial
and genealogical), we performed the Moran’s I test to test the spatial and genealogical
autocorrelations on onset and coda lengths, which confirms that both onset length
and coda length are areally and genealogically clustered (p < 0.001).
We then added these two weight matrices together. Thus, lects that are
geographical neighbors and also belong to the same family are given the score of 2;
lects that are geographical neighbors but belong to different families are given 1; lects
that belong to the same family but are not geographical neighbors are given 1; and
the rest are given 0. As a reviewer pointed out, this is under the assumption that
spatial autocorrelation and genealogical autocorrelation are of equal weight. The
rows of the converged weight matrix were then standardized so that the values of
each row add up to 1.
Based on this spatio-genealogical weight matrix, we then ran the Lagrange
multiplier diagnostics on the simple linear regressions between longitude and onset/
coda lengths to decide whether the spatial lag model or the spatial error model is
adequate to perform the spatial regression. The results show that both models are
significant. We chose the spatial lag model from a theoretical perspective, since it is
more likely that the onset and coda lengths of a lect are influenced by the onset and
coda lengths of neighboring lects (spatial lag model) than that there are unobserved
language-external factors causing onset and coda lengths of neighboring lects to be
similar (spatial error model). Finally, based on the spatial lag model, we performed
spatial regression to test the correlation between longitude of the lects and their
onset/coda length, also weighing in the spatio-genealogical weight matrix. The
results show that both onset and coda lengths are correlated with longitude (p < 0.01).
The likelihood-ratio tests in both regressions show that the rho is significant
(p < 0.001), confirming that the spatial lag model was suitable. This confirms our
visual observation that the maximal onset length and the maximal coda length grow
as one goes westwards in Eurasia, even when controlling for spatial and genealogical
autocorrelations.

5.2 Syllabic consonants

In all the sample lects, and perhaps universally, the minimal nucleus length is one
segment, as a syllable by definition requires at least one segment to form its nucleus.
 Phonotacticon 21

Some lects, however, do not require a vowel in nucleus position, as they allow
consonants to form the nucleus. Consonants that form the nucleus are known as
SYLLABIC CONSONANTS.
Figure 7 shows the distribution of lects that allow a syllabic consonant as its
nucleus (blue circles) and those that do not (red crosses). We observe that syllabic
consonants are generally permitted at the two extremes of Eurasia: In East and
Southeast Asia and (to a much lesser degree) in Europe. Although not shown in
the visualization, the phonotactic patterns of the syllabic consonants in these two
areas also tend to differ. In East and Southeast Asia, syllabic nasals tend to
occur as monosegmental syllables, such as Yue Chinese m4 唔 [m̩ 21] ‘not’, and syllabic
fricatives tend to occur only after homoorganic fricatives, such as Mandarin Chinese
sì 四 [sz̩ 51] ‘four’. In European lects, however, syllabic consonants have relatively less
phonotactic restriction and can occur after a wider range of onsets, such as English
button [bʌ.ʔn̩ ] or German Vogel [fo.ɡl̩ ] ‘bird’.
The permitted syllabic consonants are mostly nasals and sometimes liquids or
fricatives. This is an unsurprising result confirming that more sonorant segments
tend to appear in the nucleus position.

Figure 7: Syllabic consonants.

22 Joo and Hsu

5.3 Number of singleton codas

In Section 5.1, we saw that the maximal coda length varies across Eurasia. Codas are
often limited not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, as many lects only allow a
subset of their phonemes to appear in the coda position. Although many lects also
ban certain phonemes from the onset position as well, restriction in the coda position
tends to be much stronger. For example, Mandarin Chinese only allows /n ŋ/ as codas,
while allowing all consonant phonemes but /z ŋ/ as onsets.
Figure 8 visualizes the types of singleton consonants that can appear as coda,
i.e. the types of mono-consonantal codas. (The sample lects are limited to those that
have full information of singleton codas, i.e. excluding those whose singleton codas
are underspecified as <C> in the database.) It shows that in the lects of East Asia
and Southeast Asia, the coda is limited not only in terms of length but also in terms
of the number of permitted consonants. Typologically, nasals, plosives and glides
are the most common consonants as coda, whereas liquids, fricatives and affricates
are less common.

Figure 8: Number of singleton codas.

 Phonotacticon 23

5.4. Number of tones

Maddieson’s (2013c) survey of 526 lects worldwide reveals that 220 of them are tonal.
Among these tonal lects, 132 have a “simple tone system” with only two tones. The
remaining 88 have a “complex tone system” with three or more tones. His data show
that tonal lects are most heavily present in Sub-Saharan Africa and Mainland
Southeast Asia. Complex tone systems (with three or more tones) are the majority
in Mainland Southeast Asia, unlike in Sub-Saharan Africa, New Guinea, or the
Americas, where simple tone systems are numerous as well.
Figure 9 shows the number of tones per Eurasian lect. The largest number of
distinctive tonemes is ten, for example in Cao Miao (Wu 2015), and the lowest number
is one, for example in Swedish, where the tonal distinction is privative, i.e., between
the lexical tone and its absence (Riad 2013). It is easily observable that tones are a
strongly areal phenomenon, concurring with Maddieson (2013c). Most tonal lects are
distributed in Mainland Southeast Asia and China (with the notable exceptions of the
Qinghai-Gansu linguistic area, Cambodia, and southern Vietnam). Within this area,
the Guangxi province has the highest number of tones, the maximal number being
ten. Elsewhere, tones are only sparsely present, lects having at most two tones. From
this uneven distribution, we can see that tonogenesis (the emergence of tones) is
highly prone to areal pressure, even though it can happen in non-tonal environments
(e.g., in Swedish).
It is worth noting that Korean, while depicted as atonal in Figure 9, retains the
tones inherited from Middle Korean in certain varieties (notably the Southeast
variety), while the Seoul variety is currently going through tonogenesis (Kang and

Figure 9: The number of tones per lect.

24 Joo and Hsu

Han 2013). In the light of the distribution of tones in East Asia, we can hypothesize
that Korean tonogenesis may be motivated by areal pressure from Sinitic and
Japonic.

5.5 Summary

In this section, we have seen how a number of phonological patterns vary across
Eurasia. Crucially, different phonological patterns show different areal distributions:
The distribution of tones (Section 5.4), for example, is not identical to the distribution
of syllabic consonants (Section 5.2). It is therefore helpful to shed light on each one of
the phonological patterns to understand their diverse areal shapes.

6 Conclusion and prospects

In this paper, we have presented the construction of Phonotacticon 1.0, a phonotactic
database of Eurasia. In the following years, our goal is to complete Phonotacticon 2.0,
a phonotactic database of the world. With some brief descriptive analyses, we have
demonstrated that Phonotacticon 1.0 can be a helpful tool for detecting areal
phonological patterns across Eurasia. The database further enables us to investigate
a variety of interesting topics, including:
– the areality of the phonotactic distributions of certain segments, such as the
velar nasal;
– the universality of the sonority sequencing principle, or how well it is observed
throughout different lects;
– the correlation between phonotactic parameters, such as between onset length
and coda length; or
– which segments most frequently or most rarely appear as codas.

Given the detailed segmental information of a sizeable number of lects and its
computational readability via PanPhon, we foresee that Phonotacticon 1.0 and its
later versions will inspire a wealth of research into phonological diversity and
universality, in Eurasia and beyond.

Data availability statement: Phonotacticon 1.0 and the revised PanPhon are available at:
zenodo.org/records/10623743.
 Phonotacticon 25

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