Updating UPSID

Abstract

UPSID—the UCLA phonological segment inventory database—is a database containing the phoneme inventories of a large genetically based sample of languages [I. Maddieson, Patterns of Sounds (1984)]. Each phoneme is specified in terms of a comprehensive set of phonetic features. The first version of the database has proven useful to scholars interested in phonological universals and theories concerning the structure of phonological systems [e.g., B. Lindblom and I. Maddieson, in Language, Speech & Mind, edited by L. M. Hyman and C. N. Li (1988); K. Stevens and S. J. Keyset, Language 65, 81–106 (1989)]. An expanded and corrected second version is currently in preparation. This version improves the sample, increasing coverage of previously undersampled language families and correcting a few oversampling errors, and correcting errors in individual language inventories. A new custom-written software package for MS-DOS systems provides economical and flexible means of storing and modifying this enhanced database and outputting subsets of the data for further analysis. The database is stored as several separate but interrelated modules. One contains a listing of character codes for each distinct segment type occurring in the database paired with a standard phonetic description and with the list of features assigned to that segment. Another contains the phoneme inventories as a set of character codes for each language. The database is principally used by mating information from these two modules, for example, by creating a file containing the fully specified feature descriptions of the segments in a group of languages, or all segments defined by a selected set of feature values. Such files can be exported to a standard statistics package for sophisticated processing, but simpler counting operations can be performed within the UPSID program.