Haskins Publications

Number	988
Year	1995
Drawer	18
Entry Date	07/01/1998
Authors	Faber, Alice, and Di Paolo, Marianna.
Contact
Publication	Language Variation and Change, 7, 35-78.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0988.pdf
Abstract	In a near-merger, speakers produce two contrasting words differently, without reliably being able to discern the contrast in their own speech or in the speech of others. Acoustic measurements typically reveal small differences between the elements of near-merged minimal pairs along several acoustic dimensions. We argue that statistical evaluation of the potential distinctiveness of these near-merged elements must simultaneously take into account all of these dimension. For this reason, discriminant analysis is used to assess the differences between near-merged /il-Il/, /el-El/, and /ul-Ul/ for five Utah speakers. In contrast with independent univariate analyses of variance of F1, F2, f o, and spectral slope, the multivariate discriminant analyses suggest that all three contrasts are preserved by all five speakers. However, homophones like heel and heal are not distinguished by the discriminant analyses. Discriminant analysis is thus a powerful technique for assessing whether a reliable basis exists for the claim that two potentially contrastive items are in fact distinctive.
Notes