THE QUANTIFICATION OF FUNCTIONAL LOAD: A LINGUISTIC PROBLEM,

Abstract

Measures of the linguistic load carried by a contrast are developed for three cases, in which the contrasts are taken to be, respectively, phonemic, allophonic, and componential. The load carried by a contrast is non-negative and zero if the 'contrasted' units are identical, or if neither occurs in any environment in which the other is found. The measure proposed is the change in entropy of the system if the contrasted phonemes are coalesced; some problems peculiar to the allophonic case are discussed. If each distinct bundle of components is an allophone, the entropy of a given system is independent of point of view (phonemic, allophonic, or componential). (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 1966
Accession Number
AD0640617

Entities

People

  • C. F. Hockett

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Biological Phenomena
  • Contrast
  • Ecological And Environmental Phenomena
  • Environment
  • Mental Processes

Readers

  • Graph Algorithms and Convex Optimization.
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.
  • Systems Analysis and Design