Patterned Exceptions in Phonology - UCLA Department of Linguistics

In (12) and (13), there are more rows, so trends are harder to spot. To make them
more apparent, (14) lists (observed-expected)/expected for each cell. A large negative
value means that the observed value was much lower than expected, and a large positive
value means that it was much higher than expected.
(14) Place of articulation and nasal substitution: (observed-expected)/expected values
voiceless unsubstituted substituted
labial -0.518 0.041
dental 0.127 -0.010
velar 0.321 -0.026
voiced unsubstituted substituted
labial -0.364 0.556
dental 0.371 -0.567
velar 0.614 -0.938
Recall that the place effect predicts that labials should be substituted more often
than expected (positive value in the top-right cell of (14)) and unsubstituted less often
than expected (negative value in the top-left cell), velars should be the opposite, and
dentals should fall somewhere in between. The tables in (14) show that in both the
voiceless and voiced cases, labials are substituted more often than expected (although the
effect is weak for voiceless p) and are unsubstituted less often than expected; velars are
substituted at about the expected rate when voiceless and much less often when voiced,
and are unsubstituted more often than expected in both cases. Dentals and velars can be
compared by noting that the tendency to be unsubstituted more often than expected is
greater than expected in velars than in dentals in both the voiceless (0.321 vs. 0.127) and
voiced (0.614 vs. 0.371) cases. In the voiced case, the tendency to be unsubstituted less
often that expected is much stronger among velars than among dentals (-0.935 vs. -
0.551); in the voiceless case, the difference between velars and dentals is tiny (although
in the right direction: -0.026 vs. -0.010)
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