Climate, Econiche, and Sexuality: Influences on Sonority in Language

Previous cross‐cultural research by Robert Munroe and colleagues has linked two features of language to warm climates—a higher proportion of consonant‐vowel syllables and a higher proportion of sonorous (more audible) sounds. The underlying theory is that people in warmer climates communicate at a distance more often than people in colder climates, and it is adaptive to use syllables and sounds that are more easily heard and recognized at a distance. However, there is considerable variability in warm as opposed to cold climates, which needs to be explained. In the present research report, we show that additional factors increase the predictability of sonority. We find that more specific features of the environment—such as type of plant cover and degree of mountainous terrain—help to predict sonority. And, consistent with previous research on folk‐song style, measures of sexual restrictiveness also predict low sonority.