Alexander Martin edited Previous.tex  about 9 years ago

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When we began this process, we were unsure whether or not syntactic category would play a role, and so we decided to start by looking at nouns only, and then extended our calculations to the lexicon as a whole. Indeed, we wanted to have a concrete idea of what asymmetries among featural functional load, if any, were present in the noun category as the data from the experimental component of the present study is based on nouns. We were also unsure if the position of the critical difference might play a role in the exploitation of phonological features \citep[cf.][]{Connine1993,Marslen-Wilson1989}.   Therefore, we broke our calculation down into: the whole lexicon, nouns only, nominal minimal pairs distinguished on the first segment, and nominal minimal pairs distinguished on any segment but the first. The results of these counts for each feature\footnote{The counts for the \emph{place} feature were corrected by dividing the total number of observations by two. This was done because the place feature can take any one of three values, giving it one degree of freedom more than the other two features. Our correction allowed us to more easily compare the three features to each other.} can be seen in Figure \ref{fig:mpcounts}. The overall pattern was not descriptively different in the whole lexicon as compared to nouns, but changed slightly when the nouns were broken down. It should also be noted that we did find more total minimal pairs in all features that were distinguished by their initial segment than were distinguished by \emph{any} other segment. segment, SOMETHING ABOUT IMPORTANCE OF INITIAL SEGMENTS.