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In linguistics and especially phonology, functional load (''also referred to as phonemic load'') refers to the importance of certain features in making distinctions in a language. In other words, a high functional load will make it hard to guess the identity of a phoneme in context when the phoneme has not been heard. ==Overview== The term "functional load" goes back to the days of the Prague School; references to it can be found in the work of Vilem Mathesius in 1929. Its most vocal advocate was André Martinet, a historical linguist who claimed it was a factor in the likelihood of a phonological merger. 〔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〕 The first suggested measurement for functional load was the number of minimal pairs, but this does not take into account word frequency and is difficult to generalize beyond binary phonemic oppositions. Charles Hockett proposed an information theoretic definition in 1955 ,〔A manual of phonology. By CHARLES F. HOCKETT(''International journal of American linguistics'', 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 () Linguistic Society of America (the ) American Anthropological Association), 1955.〕 which has since been generalized.〔Surendran and Niyogi, (Quantifying the functional load of phonemic oppositions, distinctive features, and suprasegmentals ), chapter in ''Current trends in the theory of linguistic change. In commemoration of Eugenio Coseriu (1921-2002)'', Ole Nedergaard Thomsen (editor), Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.〕 Now, given a large text corpus, one can compute the functional load of any phonological contrast including distinctive features, suprasegmentals, and distinctions between groups of phonemes. For instance, the functional load of tones in Standard Chinese is as high as that of vowels i.e. the information lost when all tones sound alike is as much as that lost when all vowels sound alike.〔Surendran and Levow, (''The functional load of tone in Mandarin is as high as that of vowels'' ), Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2004, Nara, Japan, pp. 99-102.〕 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 e.g. merged with in Cantonese in word-initial position in the late 20th century despite the fact that of all consonants in binary opposition to , only the opposition had a higher functional load than the opposition.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「functional load」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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