ABSTRACT
The purpose of the present chapter in our study is to investigate the relationship between the form of a phoneme and the relative frequency of its occurrence. In the course of the investigation we shall obtain abundant evidence in support of the following conclusions: (1) that there exists an equilibrium between the magnitude or degree of complexity of a phoneme and the relative frequency of its occur-rence, in the sense that the magnitude or degree of com-plexity of a phoneme bears an inverse * relationship to the relative frequency of its occurrence; (2) that, by means of a process partly analogous to the process of abbreviatory truncation in words (see page 30 ff.), the phonemic system of a language is constantly striving to maintain this state of equilibrium; (3) that the preservation of this equilibrium is the probable cause of phonetic changes which lead to dialect cleavages resulting in new dialects and, ultimately, new languages.
