  One of the challenges with functional data is incorporating spatial
structure, or local correlation, into the analysis. This structure is inherent
in the output from an increasing number of biomedical technologies, and a
functional linear model is often used to estimate the relationship between the
predictor functions and scalar responses. Common approaches to the ill-posed
problem of estimating a coefficient function typically involve two stages:
regularization and estimation. Regularization is usually done via dimension
reduction, projecting onto a predefined span of basis functions or a reduced
set of eigenvectors (principal components). In contrast, we present a unified
approach that directly incorporates spatial structure into the estimation
process by exploiting the joint eigenproperties of the predictors and a linear
penalty operator. In this sense, the components in the regression are
`partially empirical' and the framework is provided by the generalized singular
value decomposition (GSVD). The GSVD clarifies the penalized estimation process
and informs the choice of penalty by making explicit the joint influence of the
penalty and predictors on the bias, variance, and performance of the estimated
coefficient function. Laboratory spectroscopy data and simulations are used to
illustrate the concepts.
