FIG. 2. %V is the mean proportion of the utterances in a language that is occupied by vowels and DC or StDev(C) is the standard deviation of the consonantal intervals. The plot incorporates eight languages spoken by four female speakers. Each speaker utters 20 sentences (each language is represented by 20 utterances). The distribution of the languages is compatible with the notion that they can be grouped into three classes as predicted by linguists’ intuitions. Reprinted from Ramus et al (1999), with permission from Elsevier.
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