Thanks my friend <| sep |> This . MultiUniverse if we really want to wank a bit <| sep |> I think I might have made this question more complicated by throwing in the term functional load , although that ' s what lead to the question . I ' m referring to people who use number of minimal sets as a proxy for functional load . The conceptual problems with this approach are at a higher level than my immediate problem , which is how the number of minimal sets are counted in the first place . E . g . there are X number of minimal tone sets in Y dictionary . You can see how the number of minimal tone sets can depend a lot on the quality of the existing documentation and which source you use , which is an especially big issue when people try to compare across languages that aren ' t well documented . I ' m trying to get a sense of how people have calculated this number in the first place .