Obituary

It is with great sadness that we report that Velma Hortensia Schleppengruber passed away last week at the age of 37. Ms Schleppengruber was a legendary figure among laboratory phoneticians as perhaps the most cited subject in the history of instrumental phonetics, though her participation was not limited to that field. Among her most famous appearances in the linguistic literature are the following:

• “The experimental design was a standard attention-tracking experiment with stimuli on the computer screen accompanying the target sounds. A total of 47 infants were tested, but the data for one infant were excluded due to failure to habituate to the design after 45 habituation trials.”

• “An initial pool of 72 subjects aged 1;3 to 1;8 was tested, but the data for one child were excluded due to fussiness.”

• “Children aged 2;4 to 2;11 were seated on their mothers’ laps facing the screen, on which the image initially corresponding to each nonce word was shown, and their attention was measured as the VOT of the initial stop was varied; the mothers were provided with ear plugs so that their responses to the stimuli would not affect the subjects’ responses. A total of 17 children were recruited, but one was excluded after urinating when the first image, a roaring lion, was shown.”

• “Subjects were drawn from three kindergarten classes at the university’s affiliated elementary school. Data for one subject could not be obtained, as she seemed too fascinated by the experimenter’s beard to pay attention to the screen. After she was excused, it was discovered the experimenter had suffered a guacamole-related accident at lunch.”

• “Subjects included 53 second-grade students. Another potential subject was excluded due to coincidental power failure.”

• “The transitivity schemas were tested on 15 third-grade students using a stuffed kitten doll, a rubber duck, a toothbrush, and four rubber bands. One participant was excluded after falling into tears and running out of the laboratory at the sight of the stuffed kitten, which it turned out resembled her own kitten that had died the day before.”

• “Seven fourth-grade students were tested on their ability to distinguish artificial fricatives created with a high-amplitude sucking device. One student was excluded from the study and data collection was prematurely ended when her hair was caught in the device, causing the equipment to short out.”

• “We recruited 18 fifth-graders to produce the words by reading randomly-ordered matrix sentences. Data for one subject were not obtained due to experimental error (the microphone jack was plugged into the output socket).”

• “After recording the minimal pairs spoken in matrix sentences by three native speakers of Bambara, the target words were extracted and randomly ordered for presentation to 27 children aged 12 to 13, all native speakers of American English, who listened to the words in pairs in a forced-choice test of identity or dissimilarity. One girl was excluded after having an immediate allergic reaction to the earbuds.”

• “To test this hypothesis, 63 eleventh-grade students of intermediate French were recruited and data obtained from 62 of them. One subject was excluded for hysterical laughter after being introduced to the laboratory technician.”

• “To test the perception of the General American split by speakers of British dialects without the split, 12 British speakers resident in the United States for a period of 6 to 18 months were recruited. An additional participant was excluded after it was realized by our British collaborator that she was actually an American high school senior trying out her imitation of Joanna Lumley.”

• “We recorded 142 college freshmen enrolled in introductory German reading the minimal pairs occurring utterance-finally in matrix sentences to test against the aspiration as read by native speakers. One participant could not be recorded, as she tripped the breakers for the building by plugging in her cell phone for recharging in the power strip that powered the laboratory equipment.”

• “Subjects were recorded in a soundproof booth in the phonetics laboratory. Data from six subjects were obtained. A seventh participant was excluded after falling asleep once the door to the booth was closed.”

• “The stimuli consisted of recordings of oral and nasal vowels as well as modified versions of them in which the intensity of the nasalization bands was reduced incrementally to determine the perceptual boundary. The stimuli were presented on headphones with a forced-choice test in which participants pressed a red button for vowels perceived as nasal and a green button for those perceived as oral. Data were obtained from 185 college juniors and seniors. One participant was excluded after the preliminary hearing test found she had lost sensitivity to frequencies between 1500 Hz and 8300 Hz due to earwax buildup.”

• “This was tested by placing EEG helmets on the participants’ heads and recording the results as the sounds and images were played at the same time. Out of 22 participants, data were obtained for 21; the other participant turned out to have gotten her hair permed that day, and the chemicals in the rinse so affected the conductivity of her skin as to render the readings meaningless.”

• “The initial run of the study involved 14 graduate students, all native speakers of General American varieties, studying in fields outside the sciences. The data for all the subjects had to be excluded, however, after the last participant tested identified the speaker in the recording as speaking a non-standard dialect of Korean.”

Phoneticians around the world expressed their sorrow at her passing. “She was always friendly and eager to help the cause of science,” reported Hans Schnittpunkt, Professor of Phonetics. “It is truly a shame that data never eventuated.” Added Arthur King-Key, “She really forced us to up our game. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong when she showed up.” Assistant Professor Ivana Long-Johnson expressed her condolences to the Schleppengruber family and shared her reminiscences, “I remember introducing myself to her and hearing the only words she ever spoke to me, ‘You actually chose that name yourself when you married?’ ”

The sentiments of the laboratory phonetics community were best expressed by Karen Bolognese-Parmesan, Director of the Jacob Hentiade Child Phonetics Laboratory, who stated, “Velma was an object lesson for all our staff, not to mention researchers around the world, for she represented the irreducible human element no experiment can ever fully exclude. It was a joke in our lab that whenever a grad student got too cocky, we’d make sure she was in the candidate pool. Many tried to get data from her but none succeeded, and all were the better for the experience.”

In her memory, the American Phonetics Association has rushed into press a volume in tribute to her, Always a Candidate, Never a Subject: The Complete Phonetic Studies of Velma Hortensia Schleppengruber, containing the 67 phonetic studies in which she participated, which represent all the major research trends and many of the significant results of instrumental phonetics throughout the 37 years of her life. It has already been slated for use in graduate phonetics classes in a variety of subfields in programs around the world, and has been made the centerpiece of laboratory practicums in several phonetics laboratories.

	2018 Conferences in Nerdolinguistics
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