# The Distribution of Phoneme Frequencies across the World's Languages: Macroscopic and Microscopic Information-Theoretic Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02860 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02860/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Phonotactic Complexity and its Trade-offs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.03774/) (2020)
- [A surprisal--duration trade-off across and within the world's languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.15000/) (2021)
- [Re-evaluating phoneme frequencies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05206/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Modelling the Diachronic Emergence of Phoneme Frequency Distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09503/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We demonstrate that the frequency distribution of phonemes across languages can be explained at both macroscopic and microscopic levels. Macroscopically, phoneme rank-frequency distributions closely follow the order statistics of a symmetric Dirichlet distribution whose single concentration parameter scales systematically with phonemic inventory size, revealing a robust compensation effect whereby larger inventories exhibit lower relative entropy. Microscopically, a Maximum Entropy model incorporating constraints from articulatory, phonotactic, and lexical structure accurately predicts language-specific phoneme probabilities. Together, these findings provide a unified information-theoretic account of phoneme frequency structure.