Does the Functional Load Principle Predict How Important Phonemic Contrasts Are to Intelligibility Among ELF Users? A Partial Replication of From an ELF Perspective

Abstract The Functional Load (FL) principle predicts that high FL phonemic contrasts, such as /i:/ and /ɪ/, contribute more to the mutual intelligibility of pronunciation than low FL phonemic contrasts, such as /u:/ and /ʊ/. In order to assess whether the FL principle accurately predicts intelligibility under English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) conditions, this study partially replicated the first study to empirically support the FL principle: Munro and Derwing (2006). Chinese speakers of English recorded 24 sentences containing target words with high and low FL phoneme substitutions, and 171 Japanese university students listened to the sentences and transcribed the target words into standard orthography. The hypothesis of this study is that the target words with high FL phoneme substitutions will be less intelligible than the target words with low FL phoneme substitutions. The results showed that the target words with high FL phoneme substitutions were indeed lower in intelligibility than the target words with low FL phoneme substitutions, and furthermore cumulative high FL phoneme substitutions lower intelligibility even more. The results are consistent with Munro and Derwing’s (2006) finding that high FL phoneme substitutions lower comprehensibility more than low FL phoneme substitutions, and thus this study claims to have replicated one aspect of their study even under ELF conditions.