Comparing Constraints on Contraction Using Bayesian Regression Modeling
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper has three goals: (1) to document the factors shaping is-contraction in Mainstream American English; (2) to assess the extent to which these factors also shape contraction of 'has'; (3) to use shared patterns of contraction across the two verbs to draw conclusions about how the varying forms are represented grammatically. While 'is' has two distinct phonological forms in variation, 'has' has three. This necessitates regression modeling which can handle non-binary response variables; I use Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo modeling. Through this modeling, I (1) uncover a number of novel predictors shaping contraction of 'is', and (2) demonstrate that many of the patterns shown by 'is' are also in evidence for 'has'. I also (3) argue that modeling 'has'-variation as the product of two stages of binary choices --- a common treatment of three-way variation in variationist sociolinguistics --- cannot adequately explain the quantitative patterns, which are only compatible with a grammatical model under which three distinct forms vary with each other. The findings have theoretical and methodological consequences for sociolinguistic work on ternary variables.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
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 | 0.045 | 0.185 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 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".