A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel Systemᝲǽ୫A Functional Assessment of the Irish English
Vowel System

Leah GILNER

ᛵǽ஖
本論文は，アイルランド英語の母音体系を機能的負荷の点から分析し，その結果を考察する。機能的負荷（FL）の枠組みを用いて，コーパスにおける生起頻度の点から言語的特徴を量的に明らかにすることができる。つ
まり FL により，言語の構造面の記述に対して，言語の運用面に関する記述を加えることができる。本論文で示す結果により，アイルランド英語の話しことばについて，International Corpus of English (ICE)-Ireland (Kallen &Kirk, 2008) から得た生起頻度に基づき，母音の相対的な関与を量的に示すことができる。FL に基づく格付けにより，母音間で創り出される対照的な存在あるいは語彙ビルディング・ブロックとして生じる体系的関係を明らかにできる。本分析により，FL に基づく格付けに依拠した調音的ジェ
スチャーと母音目録と拡散理論における特徴を包括的に記述できる。
キーワード：functional load / 機能的負荷，vowel systems / 母音体系，global
Englishes / グローバル英語，vowel dispersion theory / 母音目
録と拡散理論1

Introduction
This paper presents a description of the Irish English (IE) vowel system froma usage-based perspective by means of functional load (FL) analysis. The English

51

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42

language has been present in Ireland for over 800 years. Currently, English and Irish
are both official languages. English is the primary language of society and government.
The Irish language is spoken by about 40% of the population. Other languages usedby a significant number of the residents are French, German, Polish, Romanian, andLithuanian (Government of Ireland, 2017).
The historical trajectory of Irish English and current status have been well
documented (Cambria, 2014; Hickey, 2007; Hickey & Ronan, 2016; Kirk, 2011). Cambria(2014, p. 20) observes that IE is generally not included among post-colonial frameworks
and proposes that the reason for this is because Ireland is often regarded as a placefrom which people left on their way to colonize other parts of the world rather than aplace that was “subjected to colonialism and its practices colonizers arrived to for thatspecific purpose”. The case is made that IE “embodies the prolonged contact between
colonizer and colonized” (Cambria, 2014, p. 31) and that the emergence of the variety
followed similar processes related to identity formation as those proposed by Schneider’s(2007) Dynamic Model (DM). The DM provides a framework with which to discuss
identity formation in language contact situations resulting in the emergence of language
varieties. Within the Dynamic Model, identity construction is viewed as a process thatchanges over time along with the functions and attitudes associated with the language(s)of the local population and the language brought by settlers. IE is classified as a fully
differentiated variety. This is the final phase attained when ties and influence of external
forces are no longer at play and the nation begins a process of internal demarcation basedon regional, economic, and social parameters.
Scholars agree that a language shift from Irish to English, took place between theearly 17th century and the late 19th century (Hickey, 2004). The complex sociopoliticalfactors involved have been widely discussed in the literature and are beyond the scope of
this paper. What should be kept in mind is that the nature of IE is attributed to the factthat it was learned from colingual speakers in a transitory period of bilingualism (Kirk,
2011). IE was born out of contact over hundreds of years between the Irish language andseveral contact varieties of English spoken by people who lived in Ireland.
IE is a well-documented English variety. Volumes have been written about how thevariety has evolved, about different periods of its development, about its grammaticalorganization, about its phonological system, and about its dialect differentiation. The
Ireland section in reference guide on varieties of English compiled by Hickey (2013),

52

A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel Systemfor example, lists more than fifty titles that deal with the historical development andlinguistic features of IE and its dialects.
Usage-based literature is nascent and evolving. This is not to say that remarkable
work has not been carried out already. For example, Kirk and colleagues have undertakena series of analyses of ICE-Ireland in order to characterize lexico-grammatical featuresand pragmatic negotiation strategies of Standard Irish English (Kirk, 2011, p. 33). These
researchers have observed both exo- and endo-normative forces combine to create thisvariety. The “Irishness” of the variety has been attributed to some transfer from dialectfeatures of England and Scotland, code-switching between English and Irish as well as
lexical choices reflecting local concerns.
FL analyses of the vowel system of IE are currently unavailable in the literaturedespite the fact that FL has long been considered an integral part of the description of
any phonological system along with the inventory of phonemes, phonemic variants,
distinctive features, and phoneme combinations (King, 1967). To date, empirically-based
FL analyses have been carried out on only two English varieties, British RP (Oh, Coupé,Marsico, & Pellegrino, 2015) and General American (Gilner & Morales, 2010). The
present investigation uses corpus data from ICE-Ireland to compute FL measures andprovide a usage-driven characterization of the IE vowel system.
The paper proceeds by first describing the phonological model used for theseanalyses, then the data set and methodology before presenting the results of analyses.

2 Categorical phonological description of the supraregional varietyof Irish English
Hickey (2018) describes the sociophonetic landscape of English in present-day Ireland
in terms of five main varieties: Rural Northern, Popular Dublin, Fashionable Dublin,
Rural South-West/West, and Supraregional Southern. A model of the supraregionalvariety was used for the present investigation. It is the least regionally bound and mostwidely intelligible (Hickey, 2003). This variety is tacitly acknowledged as the national
standard and speakers add indexical information such as stylistic choices and local
identifiers by modifying the features of a “default speech style” which reflects nonregional sound patterns and phraseology (Hickey, 2003, p. 353).
Hickey (2004) describes the supraregional variety as composed of fifteen

53

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42monophthongs and five closing phonemes. Figure 1 reflects the distribution in the vowel
space.
i:
i

u:
ʊ

ɪ
e:

ə:
ə
ɛ

əʊ
ɜ

æ
a:

ɑ:
ɑ

aɪ aʊ

ɒ:

ɑɪ ɒɪ

Figure 1. Irish English vowel charts

In light of this categorical description, the system appears to favor articulations
made with the tongue in the lower region of the vowel space. Five monophthongs andfour diphthongs are produced with articulations in this area. The system is also populated
by several phonemes which are articulated in the anterior region of the mouth. Six
monophthongs and the closing position of three complex phonemes make use of thisarea of the vowel space. A middle, centralized tongue position is used to articulate threemonophthongs and the initial segment of one diphthong.
These gestural configurations can be further characterized in terms of the following
distribution of features. The monophthongs show a distributed stratification in terms of
tongue height. The features [high], [mid], and [low] are each associated with several
simple phonemes. The feature [high] is also associated with all diphthongs. The five
diphthongs in this system involve an upward movement of the tongue and close withan articulation in the upper region of the oral cavity. The feature [mid] is associatedwith six phonemes, five simple and one complex. The feature [low] characterizes ninephonemes. Five of these are monophthongs and three of them are diphthongs. One of thediphthongs is also associated with the feature [round]. The feature [front] is associatedwith nine phonemes. The six monophthongs associated with this feature are distributed
vertically in the mouth, making use of the full range of the oral cavity. In the case of
the diphthongs, this feature tends to be associated with closing segments. The feature[central] characterizes seven phonemes, four monophthongs and three diphthongs. The

54

A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel System

feature [back] is associated with seven phonemes in this system, five simple and twocomplex. Among the monophthongs, there is a concentration in the lower region of theoral cavity. Two of the diphthongs close with the tongue retracted toward the posterior
region of the mouth. Five phonemes in this system are characterized as [tense]. The
feature [long] is associated with seven monophthongal phonemes.
The vowel dispersion framework provides further parameters with which toconsider this categorical perspective of the IE vowel inventory. Global occupationaltendencies can be described as densely populating the periphery of the vowel space.
Most quadrants have multiple co-occupants. The left and right sides of the upper zone
are relatively symmetrical. Anchor points are established on both sides by relatively
energetic occupants which pull the vowel space outward. The intermediate zone displays
a noticeable gap due to an absence of occupants in the right side periphery. The rightside of the lower zone is more densely populated than the left side. The co-occupantsof the lower right quadrant are distinguished by secondary dimensions of lengthening
and rounding. The combination of these articulations establishes an anchor point in theextreme of the perimeter. There are three non-peripheral vowels in this system and they
are all concentrated in the central region of the vowel space. The non-peripheral sounds
in the interior also exploit the secondary dimension of lengthening. Schwa is included
among these occupants.

3 Methodology
3.1

Data
The data set was comprised of the transcribed forms of the dominant vocabulary(DOVO) in the spoken component of ICE-Ireland. The DOVO was elicited following
the methodology described in Gilner (2016). The size of corpus and the number oftranscribed wordforms analyzed are shown in Table 1. Coverage values indicate thepercent of all the running words that were transcribed.
Table 1. Irish English data set
ICE-Ireland (Spoken)

Corpus size

Transcribed wordforms

Coverage

617,153

540,00887.50%

Transcriptions were produced based on the phoneme inventory and lexical set

55

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42

correspondences provided by Hickey (2004). As is established practice in FL studies,
phonological representations of citation forms were used for the analyses undertaken by
this investigation. It merits mention that Surendran and Niyogi (2006) demonstrated an
82% correlation between FL measures obtained from corpora of phonetically-transcribedand phonologically-transcribed forms.

3.2 Functional load calculations
Following Hockett (1966), contemporary information-theoretic approaches to FL
analysis view language (L) as a finite set of a certain size (NL) which is made up of
sequences of words (w) and calculate the amount of information of language (L) in termsof Shannon entropy H(L). Equation 1 shows the entropy H(L) calculated over its lexicon.
ேಽHሺLሻ ൌ െ ෍ ‫݌‬௪೔ ‫ כ‬log ଶ ሺ‫݌‬௪೔ ሻ௜ୀଵEquation 1. Amount of information or entropy in language L

Equation 1 calculates the probability of word-forms (pwi) as a factor of the frequencyof occurrence of a word in a corpus. The entropy measure H(L) is used to represent theinitial state of the system (Shannon & Weaver, 1949).
‫ܮܨ‬஦,ந ൌ‫ܪ‬ሺ‫ܮ‬ሻ – ‫ܪ‬ሺ‫כܮ‬ఝట ሻ‫ܪ‬ሺ‫ܮ‬ሻEquation 2. Functional load of the contrast between two phonemes φ and ψ

Equation 2 shows the FL of a contrast between two phonemes φ and ψ. FL φ, ψ isdefined as the relative difference in the entropy between to states of the system H(L) andH(L*φψ), often normalized as shown in Equation 2 (Surendran & Niyogi, 2003). Note that
H(L*φψ) is calculated by coalescing the frequencies of all mergers involving phonemes φand ψ.
1‫ܮܨ‬Ԣ஦ ൌ ෍ ‫ܮܨ‬஦,ந
2ట

Equation 3. Functional load of a phoneme φ56

A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel System

The FL of an individual phoneme is calculated by adding all the mergers it
participates in (as shown in Equation 3), with the normalization factor ½ to ensure that
the FL of mergers are not counted twice since φ, ψ = ψ, φ (Oh, Pellegrino, Coupé, &Marsico, 2013; Surendran & Niyogi, 2003).

3.3 Complementary measures
The results of this investigation also include the following two measures: dominantrelative normalization (DRN) and least-dominant relative normalization (LDRN). The
first measure, DRN, is found in various forms in the literature (Brown, 1988; Catford,
1987; Gilner & Morales, 2010; Herdan, 1958) and expresses the FL of each member asa fraction of the member with the highest FL. The second measure, LDRN, expresses
the FL of each member as a magnitude of the member with the lowest FL. Both DRN
and LDRN express equivalent ratios and are thus also equivalent to the measure of
normalization based on the whole that is most commonly used (i.e., percentages). The
difference is that DRN and LDRN provide a means by which to assess the measures inrelation to each other rather than as a fraction of the whole.
a)ܰఝ ൌ σ௑ക೔ ‫ א‬ೄ ௑೔௑കb)‫ܴܰܦ‬ఝ ൌc)‫ܴܰܦܮ‬ఝ ൌ

௑ಾ

ൌ σ
ൌ

௑ക
௑೘

஽ோேക
೔ ‫ א‬ೄ ஽ோே೔

ேക
ேಾ

ൌ

ൌ

ேക
ே೘

ൌ σ

௅஽ோேക

೔ ‫ א‬ೄ ௅஽ோே೔

௅஽ோேക
௅஽ோேಾ

ൌ

஽ோேക
஽ோே೘

Equation 4. Equivalent relationships between normalization (percentage), DRN, and LDRNAs shown by Equation 4a, 4b, and 4c, given a set N of values X, the N, DRN, andLDRN of an element φ all express equivalent ratios, each relative to a different measure,namely, the whole (Σi ϵ s Xi), the largest value (XM), and the smallest value (Xm), respectively.
This supplementary manner of presentation expresses proportional relationships
relative to a given member and is therefore particularly suitable for FL analyses whichseek to quantify the relative amount of work done by members of a class and thereby reveal
the systemic synergy of usage-driven patterns of organization (Pellegrino, Chitoran,
Marsico, & Coupé, 2009). DRN and LDRN measures contribute to the construction

57

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42of a referential framework for describing the system and its dynamic behavior, what
Pellegrino et al. (2009) refer to as the macroscopic level of complex patterns.

4 Results and discussion
4.1 Systemic ranking of members
The FL ranking for the IE vowel system is presented in Table 2, from largest
to smallest FL value. The column labeled ‘Rank’ is associated with the member inthe column labeled ‘Phoneme’. The column labeled ‘FL’ indicates the relative amountof work that each phoneme carries based on the entropy-based measures previously
described. The columns labeled ‘DRN’ and ‘LDRN’ present FL values in terms of topdown and bottom-up normalization.
Table 2. FL ranking of the vowel inventory of the Irish English model
Rank

Phonemes

FL

DRN

LDRN

1

e:

0.01091.0000102.442

ɪ

0.00970.8882

90.98

3

ɒ:

0.00700.6475

66.32

4

ɑɪ

0.00520.4745

48.60

5

æ

0.00500.4633

47.46

6

əʊ

0.00450.4164

42.66

7

aʊ

0.00450.4162

42.64

8

i

0.00420.3832

39.26

9

ə

0.00400.3667

37.57

10

u:

0.00390.3591

36.78

11

ɛ

0.00380.3529

36.15

12

aɪ

0.00360.3335

34.16

13

i:

0.0026

0.2361

24.18

14

ɜ

0.00220.2058

21.08

15

a:

0.00200.1803

18.47

16

ɑ:

0.00130.1205

12.34

17

ʊ

0.00080.0779

7.98

18

ə:

0.00080.0773

7.92

19

ɑ

0.00010.0110

1.13

20

ɒɪ

0.00010.0098

1.00

58

A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel System

FL values range from 0.0109 to 0.0001, indicating that the 1st ranked member does
more than 100 times more work than the lowest ranked one, precisely 102.44 times moreaccording to LDRN values. FL data reveal an uneven distribution in relative amount ofwork. The majority of work is carried by the members ranked 1st and 2nd with relevant but
lesser contributions made by the members ranked 3rd and 4th. FL values decrease steadily
at a more moderate rate from the 5th ranked member on. DRN values indicate that the 3rd
ranked member does 64.75% the amount of work of the 1st ranked one and almost 15%
less than the 2nd ranked member. The 4th ranked member is the highest ranking diphthongand does less than half the amount of work of the 1st ranked member, 47.45%, and about
17.30% less than the 3rd ranked member. This curve of distribution is made apparent by
Figure 2.
1.00000.90000.8000DRN

0.70000.60000.50000.40000.30000.20000.1000e:ɪɒ: ɑɪ æ aʊ əʊ

i

ə

u:

ɛ

aɪ

i:

ɜ

a: ɑ: ʊ ə:ɑ ɒɪ

Figure 2. FL distribution curve of Irish English vowel system

The FL data make certain articulatory preferences evident. The 1st ranked phoneme/e:/ privileges energetic articulations produced in the anterior, intermediate region of
the mouth. The relevance of anterior-based articulations is reinforced by the 2nd ranked
phoneme /ɪ/. The 2nd and 3rd ranked members occupy diametrically opposed quadrants inthe vowel space. The latter of which, /ɒ:/, reinforces the function of lengthened articulationsin this system along with the association between posterior-based articulations and lip
rounding. The two phonemes /ɑɪ/ - /æ/ that follow in the ranking reinforce the relevanceof a lowered tongue position in both anterior- and posterior-based articulations. The

59

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42

diphthongs /aʊ/ - /əʊ/ that cluster together in 6th and 7th position are quite similar interms of articulatory gestures, differing largely in degree of tongue elevation in theirinitiating positions. Several phonemes ranked 9th through 11th obtain similar FL values.
Articulation of these sounds reinforces the role of tongue elevation and retraction in
distinguishing members from each other. The phonemes /i/ - /u:/ demarcate extreme
points in the upper anterior and upper posterior of the vowel space. The phonemes /ə/and /ɛ/ further delineate centralized articulations and evidence the function of tongue
retraction in keeping sounds distinct.
In terms of vowel dispersion frameworks, results indicate that the perimeter isgenerally established by the monophthongs at the top of the ranking. The 1st ranked
member establishes the intermediate-left anchor point of the perimeter and the 2nd
ranked member the upper-left anchor. The 3rd ranked member establishes the lower-rightanchor point and the 5th ranked member the lower-left. The upper-right anchor point isestablished by the member ranked 10th (out of 20).
This distributed activation of members indicates that the perceived symmetriesof the categorical description of this system provided in Table 1 in Section 2 are notmaintained in usage. Figure 3 displays the monophthong members that obtained DRN
values >= 0.1000 as presented in Table 2. The circle around each member is proportional
to its relative amount work so that the phoneme /e:/ (DRN=1.0000) is the largest, thecircle surrounding phoneme /ɪ/ is approximately 88% smaller (DRN=0.8882), and so on.

Figure 3. Vowel dispersion in light of FL

Perhaps most noticeable is how usage confines the range of phonemes that contributemost greatly to the relative amount of work. Recall that distribution of the system in60

A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel System

the vowel space provided in Section 2 based on a categorical perspective showed thatmonophthong members are broadly dispersed throughout the vowel space. The upperanterior, mid-central, and lower-posterior quadrants are each occupied by three members,
giving the perception of a balanced stratification of gestural configurations moving fromhigh-front to low-back in the vowel space. The mid-front and upper-posterior are each
occupied by two members and the low-front and low-central quadrants are occupied bysingle members.
Results of the usage-driven FL analyses show a markedly uneven activation inlight of relative amount of work. In usage, a single member among co-occupants obtains
noticeably greater FL values, indicating a much higher rate of occurrence: the most active
member of the high-front quadrant does three times more work than its next most active
co-occupant; the most active member in the mid-front quadrant does twice the amount ofwork of its co-occupant; and, the highest ranking low-back quadrant co-occupant does
almost six times that of its next most active co-occupant. In other words, the dispersal
tendencies portrayed by categorical description are not found when a usage-driven
perspective is adopted.

4.2

Contrastive pairings (CPs)
Examination of instantiated contrastive pairings presents an opportunity to add

resolution to FL rankings of phonemes by scrutinizing how they interact at a more basic
level, namely, the phonemic contrasts they form. The analyses that follow examinethat impact the specific contrastive pairings have on usage and the extent to which FL
provides an informative measure.
Table 3 provides descriptive data based on an analysis of all the contrastive pairings
Table 3. Descriptive data on contrastive pairings instantiated by the Irish English dataset
Total number of CPs

109

Average CPs per phoneme

10.8

Maximum CPs per phoneme

17

Minimum CPs per phoneme3

Top 5 CPs / total FL

34.34%

Top 15 CPs / total FL

50.46%

Remaining 94 CPs

49.54%

61

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42

instantiated in the IE data set. This data was obtained by first identifying all of the vowel
minimal pairs and then grouping them by contrastive pairing (CP).
Results indicate that a total of 109 types of CPs were instantiated. On average,
members of the IE model form 10 or 11 CPs. The most active member /e:/ engages incontrastive relationships with 17 other members. The least active member /ə/ recruits
three other members. It is interesting to note that despite this relatively inactivity in CP
formation, this member ranks 9th overall according to FL values, indicating that the
few CPs it forms are established among words with very high rates of occurrence. Also
noteworthy is the remarkable disparity between the relative amount of work carried
by upper- and lower-ranking CPs. The five pairings that obtain the highest FL values
account for almost one-third, precisely 34.34%, of the all the work carried out by thissystem. Furthermore, the 15 most active pairings account for just more than half,
specifically 50.46%, and they do more work than the remaining 94 CPs combined.
Since examination of all 109 CPs is beyond the scope of this paper, the discussionthat follows will be limited to the 15 pairings that obtain the highest FL values. Thesepairings are presented in Table 4. Some usage-driven preferences are apparent from thisTable 4. Top 15 contrastive pairings in the Irish English data set
Rank

CP

FL

DRN

LDRN

1

e: - ɑɪ

0.05228

1.00000

1,346.56

2

ɪ-æ

0.05156

0.98611

1,327.86

3

e: - ə

0.03695

0.70669

951.604

ɪ - ɒ:

0.03335

0.63793859.025

u: - ə

0.02401

0.45916618.296

i - aɪ

0.01859

0.35555478.777

ɪ - aʊ

0.01505

0.28787387.638

ɪ-ɛ

0.01393

0.26637358.689i - e:

0.01333

0.25497343.3410

əʊ - aʊ0.012930.24737333.0911

ɒ: - ɑ:0.01276

0.24407328.6612

i - u:

0.01237

0.23657

318.5613e: - aɪ0.012070.23086

310.8714

ɪ - a:

0.012050.23052

310.4015

i - əʊ

0.01179

0.22549303.6362

A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel Systemdata. For example, a remarkable unevenness in relative amount of work is observed.
LDRN values show that the two highest ranked pairings do more than 1,300 times theamount of work that the lowest ranked pairing does. A closer look at the lower ranks
reveals that the these top two pairings do about 100 times the amount of work than thepairing ranked 92nd and 10 times the amount of work than the pairing ranked 37th. The
3rd ranked pairing does about 60% less work than those ranked 1st and 2nd and a steadydecrease in contribution is observed as the ranking progresses.
Moreover, certain members are consistently among these pairings. The phoneme/e:/ is involved in four of the 15, including two of the top 5. The phoneme /ɪ/ is involved
in five of the 15, including the one ranked 2nd. The phoneme /i/ is involved in four of the
15. Low and posterior-based vowel qualities are involved in nine of the 15; in five cases,
these vowel qualities initiate a diphthong.
Describing the CPs in terms of articulatory dimensions reveals that the open/closedimension is associated with each of these pairings and is usually coupled with the front/back dimension. In all but two cases, the contrasting pair of phonemes are distinguishedby changes in tongue height. The exceptions are the pairings ranked 3rd and 11th in whichcases the phonemes are distinguished primarily by degree of tongue protraction.
More nuance can be added to this description in terms of how the phonemesthat form the pairs are distributed in the vowel space. The 1st ranked pairing activates
rather dispersed quadrants in the vowel space, the phoneme /e:/ occupies the mid-front
while the diphthong initiates in the low-back and terminates in the high-front quadrant.
The 2nd ranked pairing concentrates articulations in the anterior quadrants, isolating
distinguishing articulatory gestures to degree of tongue elevation. The 3rd ranked pairing
conversely makes use of tongue protraction primarily while maintaining an intermediate
tongue height. Among the top 5 pairings then, these two of these pairings could be
described as relatively less distinct compared with 1st ranked and 4th ranked pairings.
It is noteworthy that there is no overlap in the types of CPs formed by the more
active members /e:/ and /ɪ/. These two phonemes occupy adjacent quadrants in theanterior of the vowel space. The most active pairings formed by the mid-front phoneme
involve an anterior-closing diphthong and the mid-central-reduced monophthong while
the most active pairings formed by the high-front phoneme involve the low-front member
and the rounded co-occupant of the low-back quadrant.

63

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42

5 Closing remarks
FL analyses have revealed certain patterns of usage worth reflecting on. Resultsof the systemic FL ranking provided in Table 2 have revealed the dominant role of themembers /e:/ - /ɪ/ - /ɒ:/. The relative dominance of certain members of this system wasfurther pursued in terms of vowel quadrant activation and these results added evidence
to a systemic preference for anterior-based articulations. Results from analysis of CPs
indicates a dominance of relatively few phonemic contrasts. The top 15 CPs accounted
for a similar amount of work as the remaining 94. Further scrutiny of the more active
pairings has indicated that the IE vowel system relies on certain few members to
distinguish lexical items, specifically the phonemes /e:/ - /ɪ/ - /i/. Low-back and lowcentral vowel qualities have also been found to participate in a relatively large number of
the top 15 phonemic contrasts. Another noteworthy finding is that there is little overlap
between the members recruited in CPs by the most active phonemes /e:/ and /ɪ/.
In terms of vowel dispersion, FL quantification has shown that among the quadrants
with multiple occupants, one of the members obtains noticeably greater FL values. In
the case of the mid-front quadrant and low-back quadrants, the more energetic member
is dominant. Among the occupants of the high-front and mid-central quadrants the least
energetic member is dominant. In sum, we can say with confidence that usage-driven
analysis has produced precise data with which to add granularity to descriptions of IE
phonology. The relative dominance of these sounds and their corresponding articulatory
gestures makes it tempting to speculate about system-specific attunement of processing
and perception mechanisms.
In closing, as Maddieson (2011) points out, both categorical and usage-based
perspectives have contributions to make to phonological description and theory. Analyticaltraditions in phonetic and phonological analysis have been based on a categoricalperspective which have resulted in the compilation of phonemic inventories from anever-increasing number of languages. Examination of components within and acrosslanguages has encouraged speculation and theorization regarding structural patterns
as well as speech processing (e.g., Lindblom & Maddieson, 1988; Schwartz, Basirat,
Ménard, & Sato, 2012). At the same time, usage-based approaches offer perspectives inline with experiential and statistical models of learning. These perspectives propose that
language users form mental representations of phonological categories from analysis

64

A Functional Assessment of the Irish English Vowel Systemof actually encountered instances of usage and that representations influence speech
perception and processing. These notions find support in the vast psycholinguistic
literature on frequency effects in lexical access. The FL analyses of Irish English
provided in this paper indicate that usage-driven quantification augments categoricaldescriptions, revealing patterns of usage that are otherwise not evident from a purely
structuralist viewpoint and, consequently, constitute a potential contribution to relevant
data to the overall concerns of theories of language and the mind.

References
Brown, A. (1988). Functional load and the teaching of pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 22(2),593–606.
Cambria, M. (2014). “Is it English what we speak?” Irish English and postcolonial identity. Studi
Irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies, 4(4), 19–33. https://doi.org/10.13128/SIJIS-2239-3978-14665
Catford, J. C. (1987). Phonetics and the teaching of pronunciation. In J. Morley (Ed.), Current
perspectives on pronunciation: Practices anchored in theory (pp. 83–100). Washington, D.C.:
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.
Gilner, L. (2016). Identification of a dominant vocabulary in ELF interactions. Journal of English asa Lingua Franca, 5(1), 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1515/jelf-2016-0002
Gilner, L., & Morales, F. (2010). Functional load: Transcription and analysis of the 10,000 mostfrequent words in spoken English. The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics, 3,
133–162.
Government of Ireland. (2017). Census 2016 Summary Results—Part 1. Retrieved from http://www.
cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/census2016summaryresultspart1/Census2016
SummaryPart1.pdf
Herdan, G. (1958). The relation between the functional burdening of phonemes and the frequency ofoccurrence. Language and Speech, 1(1), 8–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383095800100102
Hickey, R. (2003). How and why supraregional varieties arise. In M. Dossena & C. Jones (Eds.),
Insights into Late Modern English (pp. 351–371). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Hickey, R. (2004). Irish English: Phonology. In E. W. Schneider & B. Kortmann (Eds.), Handbook ofvarieties of English (Vol. 1, pp. 68–97). Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Hickey, R. (2007). Irish English: History and present-day forms. Cambridge University Press.
Hickey, R. (2013). Reference guide for varieties of english. In A dictionary of varieties of English(pp. 363–431). Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118602607.refs/summary
Hickey, R. (2018, April). Irish English Resource Centre. Retrieved September 29, 2019, from https://www.uni-due.de/IERC/
Hickey, R., & Ronan, P. (Eds.). (2016). Language relations in early Ireland. In Sociolinguistics in

65

愛知大学

言語と文化

No. 42

Ireland (pp. 133–153). Springer.
Hockett, C. F. (1966). The quantification of functional load: A linguistic problem. Santa Monica,
Calif.: Rand Corp.
Kallen, J. L., & Kirk, J. M. (2008). ICE-Ireland: A User’s Guide. Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona.
King, R. D. (1967). Functional Load and Sound Change. Language, 43(4), 831–852. https://doi.
org/10.2307/411969
Kirk, J. M. (2011). What is Irish Standard English? English Today 106, 27(2), 32–38.
Lindblom, B., & Maddieson, I. (1988). Phonetic Universals in Consonant Systems. In Language,
Speech and Mind (pp. 62–78). London: Routledge.
Maddieson, I. (2011). Phonological complexity in linguistic patterning. Proceedings of the 17th
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 28–34.
Oh, Y. M., Coupé, C., Marsico, E., & Pellegrino, F. (2015). Bridging phonological system and lexicon:
Insights from a corpus study of functional load. Journal of Phonetics, 53, 153–176. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.wocn.2015.08.003
Oh, Y. M., Pellegrino, F., Coupé, C., & Marsico, E. (2013). Cross-language comparison of functionalload for vowels, consonants, and tones. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International
Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH, 3032–3036.
Pellegrino, F., Chitoran, I., Marsico, E., & Coupé, C. (2009). Introduction. In Phonology and Phonetics:
Vol. 16. Approaches to phonological complexity. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Schneider, E. W. (2007). Postcolonial English: Varieties around the world. Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Schwartz, J.-L., Basirat, A., Ménard, L., & Sato, M. (2012). The Perception-for-Action-Control
Theory (PACT): A perceptuo-motor theory of speech perception. Journal of Neurolinguistics,
25(5), 336–354. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2009.12.004
Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press.
Surendran, D., & Niyogi, P. (2003). Measuring the functional load of phonological contrasts (No.
TR-2003-2012). Retrieved from University of Chicago website: http://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0311036
Surendran, D., & Niyogi, P. (2006). Quantifying the functional load of phonemic oppositions,distinctive features, and suprasegmentals. In O. Nedergaard Thomsen (Ed.), Competing modelsof linguistic change: Evolution and beyond (pp. 43–58). Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins
Pub.

66