Therefore, for any given inventory, we can define the binary entropy H f (Shannon and Weaver, 1949) for the feature f as If F is the set of all features present in the consonants forming the inventory, then feature entropy F E is the sum of the binary entropies with respect to all the features, that is (3) Since we have assumed that f is an independent random variable, F E is the joint entropy of the system.
we conjecture that the value of α is a function of the societal structure and the cognitive capabilities of human beings.