The variable rule program is one of the predominant data analysis tools used in sociolinguistics, employed successfully for over three decades to quantitatively assess the influence of multiple factors on linguistic variables. However, its most popular current version, GoldVarb, lacks flexibility and also isolates its users from the wider community of quantitative linguists. A new version of the variable rule program, Rbrul, attempts to resolve these concerns, and with mixed‐effects modelling also addresses a more serious problem whereby GoldVarb overestimates the significance of effects. Rbrul's superior performance is demonstrated on both simulated and real data sets.

We present ENIGMA, a time domain, inspiral-merger-ringdown waveform model that describes non-spinning binary black holes systems that evolve on moderately eccentric orbits. The inspiral evolution is described using a consistent combination of post-Newtonian theory, self-force and black hole perturbation theory. Assuming eccentric binaries that circularize prior to coalescence, we smoothly match the eccentric inspiral with a stand-alone, quasi-circular merger, which is constructed using machine learning algorithms that are trained with quasi-circular numerical relativity waveforms. We show that ENIGMA reproduces with excellent accuracy the dynamics of quasi-circular compact binaries. We validate ENIGMA using a set of Einstein Toolkit eccentric numerical relativity waveforms, which describe eccentric binary black hole mergers with mass-ratios between 1 ≤ q ≤ 5.5, and eccentricities e0 ∼ < 0.2 ten orbits before merger. We use this model to explore in detail the physics that can be extracted with moderately eccentric, non-spinning binary black hole mergers. In particular, we use ENIGMA to show that the gravitational wave transients GW150914, GW151226, GW170104, GW170814 and GW170608 can be effectively recovered with spinning, quasi-circular templates if the eccentricity of these events at a gravitational wave frequency of 10Hz satisfies e0 ≤ {0.175, 0.125, 0.175, 0.175, 0.125}, respectively. We show that if these systems have eccentricities e0 ∼ 0.1 at a gravitational wave frequency of 10Hz, they can be misclassified as quasi-circular binaries due to parameter space degeneracies between eccentricity and spin corrections. Using our catalog of eccentric numerical relativity simulations, we discuss the importance of including higher-order waveform multipoles in gravitational wave searches of eccentric binary black hole mergers.

This article evaluates a speaker-intrinsic vowel formant frequency normalization algorithm initially proposed in Watt & Fabricius (2002). We compare how well this routine, known as the S-centroid procedure, performs as a sociophonetic research tool in three ways: reducing variance in area ratios of vowel spaces (by attempting to equalize vowel space areas); improving overlap of vowel polygons; and reproducing relative positions of vowel means within the vowel space, compared with formant data in raw Hertz. The study uses existing data sets of vowel formant data from two varieties of English, Received Pronunciation and Aberdeen English (northeast Scotland). We conclude that, for the data examined here, the S-centroid W&F procedure performs at least as well as the two speakerintrinsic, vowel-extrinsic, formant-intrinsic normalization methods rated as best performing by Adank (2003): Lobanov's (1971) z-score procedure and Nearey's (1978) individual log-mean procedure (CLIH i4 in Adank [2003], CLIH i2 as tested here), and in some test cases better than the latter.The S-centroid vowel normalization procedure, originally presented in detail in Watt & Fabricius (2002), was developed to further research on variation and change in British English vowel systems (e.g., Watt & Tillotson's [2001] discussion of Bradford English). It offered a new normalization method tailored specifically for sociophonetics, optimizing as far as possible comparisons of vowel systems from different speakers, both male and female, without priorThe authors thank Caroline Moreiras and Bronwen Evans for access to Moreiras ' (2006) unpublished vowel formant data, Jillian Oddie for assisting with the Aberdeen data collection and analysis, Tyler Kendall for advice on the NORM suite, Victoria Watt with help with processing the Aberdeen data, and Bernhard Fabricius for assistance with exploratory mathematical and programming tasks. Data collection in Aberdeen was

While the research literature on second language (L2) fluency is replete with descriptions of fluency and its influence with regard to English as an additional language, little is known about what fluency features influence judgments of fluency in L2 French. This study reports the results of an investigation that analyzed the relationship between utterance fluency measures and raters' perceptions of L2 fluency in French using mixed-effects modeling. Participants were 40 adult learners of French at varying levels of proficiency, studying in a university immersion context. Speech performances were collected on three different types of narrative tasks. Four utterance fluency measures were extracted from each performance. Eleven untrained judges rated the speech performances and we examined which utterance fluency measures are the best predictors of the scores awarded by the raters. The mean length of runs and articulation rate proved to be the most influential factors in raters' judgments, while the frequency of pauses played a less important role. The length of pauses was positively related to fluency scores, indicating a prominent cross-linguistic variation specific to French. The relative importance of the utterance measures in predicting fluency ratings, however, was found to vary across tasks.

This study tests the extent of speakers' linguistic accommodation to members of putative in-groups and out-groups in a border locality where such categorizations can be said to be particularly accentuated. Variation in the speech of informants in dialect contact interactions with separate interviewers is analyzed for evidence of speech accommodation in the form of phonological convergence or divergence. The data do not support a straightforward interpretation of accommodation, and findings are considered in terms of evidence required for such an account. Implications for the notion of salience in explanations of contact-induced language change are also considered, as is the significance of the "interviewer effect" in the compilation of data sets for use in quantitative studies of phonological variation and change.

This paper examines change in social and linguistic effects on be like usage and acceptability. Results from two studies are presented. The first set of data comes from a trend study with samples of U.K. University undergraduates collected in 1996 and 2006. While the effect of subject person, morphological tense, and quote content is constant in our two samples, the effect of speaker sex decreases. The second study is a judgment experiment with 121 native speakers of U.S. English, examining acceptability of be like in environments biasing direct speech and reported thought readings. The analysis reveals no interaction between age and the reported thought/direct speech contrast, suggesting no support for change in this effect on be like acceptability in apparent time. The two studies therefore converge in suggesting no evidence of change in linguistic constraints on be like as it has diffused into U.K. and U.S. Englishes.

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