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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Functional load</span></span>

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<p>In <a href="Linguistics" title="Linguistics">linguistics</a> and especially <a href="Phonology" title="Phonology">phonology</a>, <b>functional load</b>, or <b>phonemic load</b>, is the collection of words that contain a certain pronunciation feature (a <a href="Phoneme" title="Phoneme">phoneme</a>) that makes distinctions between other words. Phonemes with a high functional load distinguish a large number of words from other words, and phonemes with a low functional load distinguish relatively fewer words from other words. The omission or mishearing of features with a high functional load thus leads to more confusion than features with a low functional load.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Overview">Overview</h2></div>

<p>The term "functional load" goes back to the days of the <a href="Prague_School" class="mw-redirect" title="Prague School">Prague School</a>; references to it can be found in the work of <a href="Vil%C3%A9m_Mathesius" title="Vilém Mathesius">Vilém Mathesius</a> in 1929. Its most vocal advocate was <a href="Andr%C3%A9_Martinet" title="André Martinet">André Martinet</a>, a historical linguist who claimed it was a factor in the likelihood of a phonological merger.<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

</p><p>The first suggested measurement for functional load was the number of minimal pairs, but that does not take into account word frequency and is difficult to generalize beyond binary phonemic oppositions. Charles Hockett proposed an <a href="Information_theory" title="Information theory">information theoretic</a> definition in 1955,<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-2"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>2<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> which has since been generalized.<sup id="cite_ref-surniy_3-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-surniy-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup> Now, with a large <a href="Text_corpus" title="Text corpus">text corpus</a>, one can compute the functional load of any phonological contrast including <a href="Distinctive_feature" title="Distinctive feature">distinctive features</a>, <a href="Suprasegmental" class="mw-redirect" title="Suprasegmental">suprasegmentals</a>, and distinctions between groups of <a href="Phoneme" title="Phoneme">phonemes</a>. For instance, the functional load of tones in <a href="Mandarin_Chinese" title="Mandarin Chinese">Mandarin Chinese</a> is as high as that of vowels: the information lost when all tones sound alike is as much as that lost when all vowels sound alike.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-4"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>4<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

</p><p>Martinet predicted that perceptually similar pairs of phonemes with low functional load would merge. This has not been proved empirically; indeed, all empirical tests have come out against it; for example, <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/n/</span> merged with <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/l/</span> in <a href="Cantonese" title="Cantonese">Cantonese</a> in word-initial position in the late 20th century although of all the consonants in binary opposition to <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/n/</span>, only the <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/n/-/m/</span> opposition had a higher functional load than the <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/n/-/l/</span> opposition.<sup id="cite_ref-surniy_3-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-surniy-3"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>3<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Examples">Examples</h2></div>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="English">English</h3></div>

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<p>English <a href="Vowel" title="Vowel">vowels</a>, for example, have a very high functional load. There are innumerable sets of words <a href="Minimal_pair" title="Minimal pair">distinguished just</a> by their vowels, such as <i>pin, pen, pan, pun, pain, pine</i>. <a href="Voice_(phonetics)" title="Voice (phonetics)">Voicing</a> is similar, as can be seen in <i>pat - bad, few - view</i>. Speakers who do not control these differences make it very difficult for others to understand them.

</p><p>However, although voicing is generally important in English, the voicing difference between the two fricatives written ⟨th⟩, <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/θ,<span class="wrap"> </span>ð/</span>, has a very low functional load: it is difficult to find meaningful distinctions dependent solely on this difference. One of the few examples is <i>thigh</i> vs. <i>thy</i> although the two can be distinguished from context alone. Similar is the difference of <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/dʒ/</span> (written ⟨j⟩, ⟨ge⟩, etc.) versus <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/ʒ/</span> (<a href="Phonological_history_of_English_consonant_clusters#Yod-coalescence" title="Phonological history of English consonant clusters">resulting from</a> <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/z<span class="wrap"> </span>+<span class="wrap"> </span>j/</span>, or the ⟨j⟩, ⟨ge⟩, etc. in some recent <a href="French_language" title="French language">French</a> loanwords), as in <i>virgin</i> vs. <i>version</i>. The difference between the two ⟨ng⟩ sounds, <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">[ŋ,<span class="wrap"> </span>ŋɡ]</span>, found in <i>singer</i> and <i>finger</i>, is so unimportant that it makes no practical difference if one confuses them, and some dialects pronounce the sounds the same in both words. The functional load is nearly zero, which is unsurprising since the phoneme <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">/ŋ/</span> originated as a <a href="Phonological_history_of_English_consonant_clusters#NG-coalescence" title="Phonological history of English consonant clusters">coalescence of <span class="IPA nowrap" lang="und-Latn-fonipa" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">[ŋɡ]</span></a> when it was word-final.

</p><p>An ongoing example would be the merger of the AIR and EAR vowels in <a href="New_Zealand_English" title="New Zealand English">New Zealand English</a>. The phonetic similarity between words like <i>here</i> and <i>hare</i> does not seem to hamper oral communication greatly if context is provided. Therefore, those vowels have low functional load in New Zealand English despite their high frequency of occurrences in that dialect. The distinction is fully maintained in nearby <a href="Australian_English" title="Australian English">Australian English</a>, where many find comedy and confusion in mergers such as <i>sheep-sharing</i> vs. <i>sheep-shearing</i>.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Mandarin">Mandarin</h3></div>

<p>The functional load of <a href="Tone_(linguistics)" title="Tone (linguistics)">tone</a> in <a href="Mandarin_Chinese" title="Mandarin Chinese">Mandarin Chinese</a> is approximately equal to the functional load of <a href="Vowels" class="mw-redirect" title="Vowels">vowels</a>. The loss of information when all tones sound alike in Mandarin is approximately equal to that when all vowels sound alike.

</p><p>By contrast, in many <a href="Bantu_languages" title="Bantu languages">Bantu languages</a>, the tones have a low functional load, and in <a href="Swahili_language" title="Swahili language">Swahili</a>, tones have disappeared altogether.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>

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<li id="cite_note-1"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-1">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Économie des changements phonétiques: Traité de phonologie diachronique. Par ANDRÉ MARTINET. (Bibliotheca romanica, Series prima: Manualia et cornrnentationes, No. 10.) Pp. 396. Berne: editions A. Francke S. A., 1955</span>

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<li id="cite_note-2"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">A manual of phonology. By CHARLES F. HOCKETT(<i>International journal of American linguistics</i>, Vol. 21, No. 4, Part 1 October 1955 = Indiana University publications in anthropology and linguistics, Memoir 11 of IJAL.) Pp. v, 246. Baltimore: Waverly Press (for Indiana University, under the auspices of [the] Linguistic Society of America [and the] American Anthropological Association), 1955.</span>

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<li id="cite_note-surniy-3"><span class="mw-cite-backlink">^ <a href="#cite_ref-surniy_3-0"><sup><i><b>a</b></i></sup></a> <a href="#cite_ref-surniy_3-1"><sup><i><b>b</b></i></sup></a></span> <span class="reference-text">Surendran and Niyogi, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~dinoj/fload_bookchapter.pdf">Quantifying the functional load of phonemic oppositions, distinctive features, and suprasegmentals</a>, chapter in <i>Current trends in the theory of linguistic change. In commemoration of Eugenio Coseriu (1921-2002)</i>, Ole Nedergaard Thomsen (editor), Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.</span>

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<li id="cite_note-4"><span class="mw-cite-backlink"><b><a href="#cite_ref-4">^</a></b></span> <span class="reference-text">Surendran and Levow, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.isca-speech.org/archive_open/sp2004/sp04_099.pdf"><i>The functional load of tone in Mandarin is as high as that of vowels</i></a>, Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2004, Nara, Japan, pp. 99–102.</span>

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