Bimodal schwa: Evidence from acoustic measurements
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The question of whether schwa is targeted or targetless has been the subject of much debate (Browman et al., 1992; Browman and Goldstein, 1995; Gick, 1999, 2002). Gick (2002) found that there is a pharyngeal constriction during schwa relative to rest position, and concluded that schwa is not targetless. This experiment further showed a ‘‘bimodal’’ pattern in schwa in a nonrhotic speaker, indicating that the subject has distinct schwas in lexical words and function words. The present study examines the existence of the ‘‘bimodal’’ pattern in schwas in nonrhotic dialects through an acoustic experiment. It is predicted that there is a significant difference in formant values between lexical schwas and function schwas. Results to date indicate a significant difference in them between schwas in lexical versus function words, both between historical schwas and those derived from final /r/ reduction. Data from several additional nonrhotic subjects will be presented. Implications for intrusive r as well as for the phonological treatment of function words will be discussed. [Work funded by NSERC and SSHRC.]
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".