One of the many verbal mysteries of Donald Trump is whether the GOP presidential nominee is saying "bigly" or "big league."
Over the course of his campaign he has said what sounds like the grammatically grating "bigly" at numerous debates, press conferences, rallies and campaign events.
SEE ALSO:Dictionary fact-checks America's vocabulary during debateAt Wednesday's debate he brought it out again.
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This time, though, the linguists were on it.
Susan Lin, an assistant linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, posted her definitive answer Wednesday evening to the linguist Facebook group Friends of Berkeley Linguistics.
"'Bigly' or 'big league'? The latter, I'm quite sure," Lin said on the group page.
To defend her declaration, she included a spectrogram, a visual chart showing the phonetic pronunciation of words. Think of it as a voiceprint instead of a fingerprint. Based on her analysis, Trump introduces a second "G" sound as he ends the word, forming the clipped "league" in "big league."
The linguist community was quick to chime in. Tara McAllister Byun, a New York University linguist, passed along the findings, as did other linguists, noting that the velar pinch toward the end really seals the deal.
The phoneticians have spoken, and it actually is "big league": note the velar pinch and the stop closure/burst https://t.co/5VyjPaGqff pic.twitter.com/M9p0vvjMXk
— Tara McAllister Byun (@ByunLab) October 20, 2016
It’s def “big-league”-check out that velar pinch! (no it’s not something Trump does to women; is a cue to /g/). Spectrogram from Susan Lin! pic.twitter.com/91AdY60VN4
— Jennifer Nycz (@jennycz) October 20, 2016
We'd probably still be debating this mystery way beyond election day if it weren't for these linguists, big league.
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