Minimal pairs and functional loads of sound contrasts obtained from a list of modern greek words

Abstract

This paper reports on the initial results of our investigation into the distribution of speech sounds across the lexicon of Modern Greek (MG). The data we discuss ultimately derive from the list of orthographic word-types of a large general corpus of written MG. The orthographic word-types were automatically transcribed into their respective citation forms. Minimal pairs were automatically extracted from the resultant list of citation forms. The Functional Load (FL) of each sound opposition was computed as a function of (a) the length of citation forms, (b) the position of each sound contrast within citation forms and (c) the number of minimal pairs pertinent to each opposition in question. The body of data yielded by this study will be used for further research in MG phonology as well as for the improvement of the performance of Automatic Speech Recognition applications. Index Terms: minimal pair, functional load, contrastive distribution, phoneme inventory, Modern Greek