The cultural evolution of syntactic constraints in phonology

Cop yrigh ted Material Sounds fall into classes and the classes form a combinatorial system. It follows that the emergence of the sound system of a specific language has two aspects: (1) the emergence of a repertoire of individual sounds and (2) the emergence of an additional level of syntactic complexity constraining their combination. This paper is concerned with the problem how phonological classes and combinatorial constraints may emerge and continue to evolve. It is a concrete case study on how a level of (syntactic) complexity and systematicity might self-organise from independent units through cultural