100 basic words (the corpus of the study) is such a small subset, especially if you posit very strong correlations among subsets of those 100 words most likely to be used in the first year of life.
And especially considering that the researchers "reduced all sounds to 34 distinct consonants and 7 vowels." (Consider that the more we reduce and simplify the vocalizations the more likely we should expect correlations. For example, if we simplified all sounds to grunts we should expect tremendous overlap.)
The correlation of the corpus of 100 words isn't particularly surprising given what we already know about language development. The null hypothesis was that there'd be no correlation whatsoever (i.e. the sounds would be completely random), which I don't think anybody could reasonably expect.
Indeed. Especially when the article gives us this: "...the team found a lot more consistency across languages than they had expected." What does that mean? Were their originally expectations reasonable, or did they merely re-discover the birthday paradox?
And especially considering that the researchers "reduced all sounds to 34 distinct consonants and 7 vowels." (Consider that the more we reduce and simplify the vocalizations the more likely we should expect correlations. For example, if we simplified all sounds to grunts we should expect tremendous overlap.)
The correlation of the corpus of 100 words isn't particularly surprising given what we already know about language development. The null hypothesis was that there'd be no correlation whatsoever (i.e. the sounds would be completely random), which I don't think anybody could reasonably expect.