Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

5-7-2025

Published In

Proceedings Of The Linguistic Society Of America

Abstract

This study replicates, and extends to Kra-Dai languages, earlier work on minimal wordlist size needed to make a phonological profile of a language. Previous work on Australian languages recommended approximately 400 randomly sampled words to comprise a minimally complete profile in terms of reliably capturing every phoneme, and with accurate distribution. We survey 55 Kra-Dai languages to show that a longer minimal list is necessary, which we attribute to typological differences like larger consonant/vowel inventories. Given the widespread use of short wordlists in fieldwork, these results hold significance for designing language documentation surveys as well as projects that use legacy wordlist data.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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This work is freely available under a Creative Commons license.

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