Cross-Cultural Correlates of the Consonant-Vowel (CV) Syllable

Abstract

Universality of the simple consonant-vowel (CV) syllable probably reflects its status as a prototype syllable facilitative of oral communication. Although CV is ubiquitous, it makes up only a minority of the syllabic corpus of some languages, whereas it is dominant in others. In an attempt to account for the differential frequency of CV across languages, a cross-cultural study was conducted (N = 53) to test the general hypothesis that CV would occur most often under conditions in which oral communicability was a desideratum. One prediction was based on the assumptions that (a) people in warm to moderate climates, as inhabitants of "outdoor" cultures, would on average engage in more distal communication than people in cold climates; and (b) such distal communication would create a need for optimal transmittal of messages, that is, high CV usage. The prediction was supported. A second prediction was based on the assumptions that (a) writing systems, which do not depend on

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