University of Arizona, Dept. of Linguistics, Douglass Bldg., Rm. 200E, P.O. Box 210028, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
Cognition. 2013 Aug;128(2):179-86. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.03.002. Epub 2013 May 14.
For nearly a century, linguists have suggested that diachronic merger is less likely between phonemes with a high functional load--that is, phonemes that distinguish many words in the language in question. However, limitations in data and computational power have made assessing this hypothesis difficult. Here we present the first larger-scale study of the functional load hypothesis, using data from sound changes in a diverse set of languages. Our results support the functional load hypothesis: phoneme pairs undergoing merger distinguish significantly fewer minimal pairs in the lexicon than unmerged phoneme pairs. Furthermore, we show that higher phoneme probability is positively correlated with merger, but that this effect is stronger for phonemes that distinguish no minimal pairs. Finally, within our dataset we find that minimal pair count and phoneme probability better predict merger than change in system entropy at the lexical or phoneme level.
近一个世纪以来，语言学家提出，在功能负荷较高的音位（即区分语言中许多单词的音位）之间，历时合并的可能性较小。然而，数据和计算能力的限制使得评估这一假设变得困难。在这里，我们首次使用来自多种语言的语音变化数据，对功能负荷假说进行了更大规模的研究。我们的研究结果支持了功能负荷假说：正在合并的音位对在词汇中区分的最小对数量明显少于未合并的音位对。此外，我们还表明，音位的概率越高，合并的可能性就越大，但对于不区分最小对的音位来说，这种影响更强。最后，在我们的数据集内，我们发现最小对计数和音位概率比在词汇或音位层面上系统熵的变化更能预测合并。
