A constriction geometry analysis of place contrasts in Malayalam nasals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study examines the constriction geometry of a typologically rare 6-way place contrast in Malayalam nasals.This is done using static MRI data obtained from two speakers.The measures of tongue constriction angle (higher for more posterior places) and tongue constriction length (higher for laminals and dorsals) were found to provide a relatively good characterization of the contrast.Altogether, all pairs of consonants were statistically distinguished by a combination of these variables except for the dental vs. alveolar contrast (and two other pairs for one of the speakers).The nasal consonants were realized as apico-laminal dental /n̪ /, apical alveolar /n/, laminal alveolar or alveolopalatal /ɲ/, subapical palatal (retroflex) /ɳ/, fronted velar /ŋʲ/ and (plain) velar /ŋ/.This is largely consistent with previous phonetic descriptions of the sounds and earlier palatographic data available for coronals.Finally, the results for dental and retroflex nasals are compared to similar consonants in Kannada (another Dravidian language), pointing to potential language-particular differences in the realization of the contrast.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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".