Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper investigates acoustic characteristics of preaspirated consonants in Plains Cree, an Algonquian language of Canada, as spoken in Maskwacis, Alberta. Phonemic preaspirated stops are a pervasive characteristic of Western Cree dialects (e.g. Wolfart, 1996), though few phonological or phonetic descriptions exist. Some works describe ongoing weakening and deletion of preaspiration in certain areas; for example, Starks and Ballard (2003) investigate ongoing changes in Woods Cree (northern Saskatchewan) wherein younger speakers consistently neutralise certain plain and preaspirated consonants. Similarly, plain and preaspirated consonants have fallen together in some Plains Cree communities in southern Saskatchewan; long and short vowels had fallen together in these contexts before preaspiration was lost, resulting in homophony, especially in inflectional paradigms (Arok Wolvengrey, pers. comm.). For this investigation of Plains Cree, careful pronunciations were elicited in Maskwacis, Alberta (8 speakers, 6 female, ages 50-80). The occurrence and duration of preaspiration, as well as the vowel duration in preaspiration environments, were analysed. Methods for measuring preaspiration as a devoiced period between a vowel and the following consonant closure are adapted from Pind’s (1995) study of Icelandic preaspiration. The occurrence of preaspiration is evident in 87% of careful pronunciations by these speakers and the duration of preaspiration is influenced by vowel duration. Vowel duration does not demonstrate neutralisation in preaspiration environments among these speakers. Investigations of preaspiration in Cree allow for comparisons, more detailed descriptions, and improvements to pedagogical materials across dialects. References Pind, J. (1995). Constancy and normalization in the perception of Voice Offset Time as a cue for preaspiration. Acta Psychologica , 89 (1), 53-81. Starks, D., & Ballard, E. (2003). A short note on changes in pre-aspiration in Woods Cree. Linguistica Atlantica , 24 (0), 1-7. Wolfart, H. C. (1996). Sketch of Cree, an Algonquian Language. In Handbook of American Indians. Vol. 17: Languages (pp. 390-439). Washington: Smithsonian Institute.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
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".