TY - GEN

T1 - Determining categoricity in English /l/-darkening

T2 - A principal component analysis of ultrasound spline data

AU - Turton, Danielle

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - Although syllable-based accounts of /l/-darkening in English state that light [l] occurs in onsets (e.g. ‘leap’) and a dark [ë] in codas (e.g. ‘peel’), analyses of the process from several phonetic studies have led to some arguing against an allophonic distinction altogether, stating that the difference betweenlight and dark variants is merely two extremes of one continuum. The current paper attempts to address this debate using ultrasound tongue imaging, in particular, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of tongue spline data. Although PCA of spline contours may be seen as a relatively rough method whencompared with analysis of raw pixel images, it is argued that the simplicity of attaching one individual figure to a contour is a highly efficient and convenient method for observing general patterns in the data

AB - Although syllable-based accounts of /l/-darkening in English state that light [l] occurs in onsets (e.g. ‘leap’) and a dark [ë] in codas (e.g. ‘peel’), analyses of the process from several phonetic studies have led to some arguing against an allophonic distinction altogether, stating that the difference betweenlight and dark variants is merely two extremes of one continuum. The current paper attempts to address this debate using ultrasound tongue imaging, in particular, a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of tongue spline data. Although PCA of spline contours may be seen as a relatively rough method whencompared with analysis of raw pixel images, it is argued that the simplicity of attaching one individual figure to a contour is a highly efficient and convenient method for observing general patterns in the data

M3 - Conference contribution/Paper

BT - Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences

ER -