Making sense of outliers

TY - JOUR

T1 - Making sense of outliers

AU - Ogden, Richard

PY - 2012/11

Y1 - 2012/11

N2 - Phonetic inquiry, particularly of the kind which looks at large numbers of items, frequently asks what a ‘typical’ example of a phenomenon of speech is like. For example, in describing the plosives of a language, it is common to calculate average closure durations or voice onset times in some context. In this paper, the focus is on examples from natural conversation where there are untypical patterns, and where the item of interest is, in statistical terms, an outlier. Outliers are generally excluded from linguistic analysis, and may be treated as e.g. production errors. The paper shows instead that at least some outliers are in fact part of a meaningful practice, and an orderly method by which speakers can create meaning.

AB - Phonetic inquiry, particularly of the kind which looks at large numbers of items, frequently asks what a ‘typical’ example of a phenomenon of speech is like. For example, in describing the plosives of a language, it is common to calculate average closure durations or voice onset times in some context. In this paper, the focus is on examples from natural conversation where there are untypical patterns, and where the item of interest is, in statistical terms, an outlier. Outliers are generally excluded from linguistic analysis, and may be treated as e.g. production errors. The paper shows instead that at least some outliers are in fact part of a meaningful practice, and an orderly method by which speakers can create meaning.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84870015695&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1159/000343197

DO - 10.1159/000343197

M3 - Article

SN - 0031-8388

VL - 69

SP - 48

EP - 67

JO - Phonetica

JF - Phonetica

IS - 1-2

ER -