This paper seeks to assess the role of functional factors in the development of the /e \(\sim \) \(\upvarepsilon \)/ unconditioned merger that has taken place in Seoul Korean. We explore several alternative measures of functional load, one measure of phonetic distance evaluated on a perceptual scale, and a simple integrative measure, which combines functional load and phonetic distance into a single ‘contrastivity index.’ Our results show that, while both functional load and perceptual distance hint at the fact that /e \(\sim \) \(\upvarepsilon \)/ was a weak contrast, this effect is clearest when these two factors are integrated together, especially when functional load is measured as phone-level entropy loss. The proposed metric thus offers a fruitful way of modeling the interaction between functional factors in the development of mergers.

中文翻译：

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关于对比度在/ e $$ \ sim \ upvarepsilon / $$〜ε/韩文合并中的发展中的作用

本文旨在评估功能性因素在韩国汉城发生的/ e \（\ sim \） \（\ upvarepsilon \） /无条件合并中的作用。我们探索了功能负荷的几种替代度量，一种在感知尺度上评估语音距离的度量，以及一种将功能负荷和语音距离合并为单个“对比度指数”的简单集成度量。我们的结果表明，尽管功能负载和感知距离都暗示了/ e \（\ sim \） \（\ upvarepsilon \）/是一个弱对比，当将这两个因素整合在一起时，尤其是在以电话级别的熵损失来衡量功能负荷时，这种影响最为明显。因此，拟议的度量标准提供了一种有效的方式来建模合并发展中功能性因素之间的相互作用。