Phonology as human behavior

The authors analyze the distribution in the lexicon of nine Peninsular Spanish consonants (/p, t, k, b, d, g, f, ?, ?/) within the framework of Phonology as Human Behavior with respect to two hypothesised factors: Complexity of Articulation and Visibility. In general, the observed distribution of the uncombined consonants is according to the hypotheses tested. However, one member, /k/, occurs more frequently than would be expected. The authors show that /k/ belongs to a particular subset of consonants in Spanish, which might explain a relative favoring, but they also observe that /k/ appears to be more frequent in other languages as well. It appears that another factor, the Size of Cavity, might play a decisive role.