Measuring the Functional Load of Phonological Contrasts

Cross-language comparison of functional load for vowels, consonants, and tones

The notion of functional load (FL) quantifies the role a phonological contrast plays in keeping words distinct in a given language. Several studies have emphasized its potential impact on language evolution and acquisition, and FL has repeatedly been mentioned as a useful tool to supplement phonological descriptions for more than seventy years. It is nevertheless still rarely explored and this ...

The University of Chicago the Functional Load of Phonological Contrasts a Thesis to Be Submitted to the Faculty of the Division of the Physical Sciences in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Science Department of Computer Science By

Bridging phonological system and lexicon: Insights from a corpus study of functional load

As stated by Hockett, “The function of a phonemic system is to keep the utterances of a language apart” (Hockett, 1966:1).Phonemes are thus considered the elementary bricks on which contrasts between words are built. The most obvious procedure to identify them is by listing minimal pairs (when they exist): two sound sequences associated with two different meanings and differing by only one elem...

Functional dissociations within the inferior parietal cortex in verbal working memory.

Neuroimaging studies of working memory have revealed two sites in the left supramarginal gyrus that may support the short-term storage of phonological information. Activation in the left dorsal aspect of the inferior parietal cortex (DIPC) has been observed in contrasts of working memory load, whereas activation in the ventral aspect of the inferior parietal cortex (VIPC) has been found primari...

Comparative Effectiveness of Semantic Feature Analysis (SFA) and Phonological Components Analysis (PCA) for Anomia Treatment in Persian Speaking Patients With Aphasia

Objectives: Anomia is one of the most common and persistent symptoms of aphasia. Although treatments of anomia usually focus on semantic and/or phonological levels, which both have been demonstrated to be effective, the relationship between the underlying functional deficit in naming and response to a particular treatment approach remains unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the rela...