# Exploiting pronouncing dictionaries (1964-2022)

Jean-Louis Duchet

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Jean-Louis Duchet. Exploiting pronouncing dictionaries (1964-2022). Colloque d'avril d'anglais oral, Université Sorbonne Paris-Nord, Villetaneuse, Apr 2022, Villetaneuse (Université Paris 13), France. halshs-05483954

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# Exploiting pronouncing dictionaries
(1964-2022)

Jean-Louis Duchet,
Université de Poitiers
# Pronouncing dictionaries

The study of English phonetics in many universities in this country has always been associated with dictionaries:

- **pronouncing dictionaries**

- and **learners' dictionaries** integrating reliable phonetic transcriptions.

Dictionaries have been used a **corpus** from which **rules** could be inferred and phonological or **morphological hypotheses** formulated.
Lionel Guierre

We inherited this tradition from **Lionel Guierre,** whose purpose was to establish **rules** where many in the British phonetic tradition only saw **chaos.**

**The Chaos,** by Gerard Nolst Trenité (1922)

*Dearest creature in creation,*
*Study English pronunciation.*
*I will teach you in my verse*
*Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.*
Predictability

- Following the tradition of language teachers in France (Beljame, Las Vergnas, Faure) Guierre was making the point that:

(a) **stress-patterns** were predictable on a morphological and phonetic basis; and

(b) **vowel quality** could be predicted on the basis of stress placement patterns.
French handbooks 1944-1958

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
Guierre vs Jones and *SPE*

This was running counter to two traditions:

- the **British tradition** based on Jones's *Outline of English phonetics*: "Many students find the best way of learning the stress of English words is simply to **learn the stress of each individual word** as they come across it", 1922, p. 111).

- and the **American tradition** of generative phonology, **placing stress on the basis of vowel quality and/or quantity (SPE)** rather than the reverse.
Changes in the 60s

- After Guierre had published his Drills in English stress-Patterns, following Roger Kingdon's *Groundwork of English stress* (1959), it is only with Erik Fudge's publication of *English Word Stress* in 1984 that the relevance of stress rules applying to classes of words was fully recognized
Guierre and Wells

It was later exploited by **Wells** in his *Pronouncing Dictionary*, in which **stress-imposing** endings and **stress-neutral** endings were immediately familiar to Lionel Guierre's followers in this country:

Cf. *Drills in English Stress-Patterns*, 3rd ed 1975, §1.3, p. 23:

**weak endings** (-ly), **strong endings** (-ity), **bound endings** (-al)
# Guerre's thesis

Guerre launched a pioneering research project which he describes in *Cent ans de phonétique en France* (*Modèles linguistiques*):

> "En 1967, j'avais personnelment terminé la saisie sur 40 000 cartes perforées de l'English Pronouncing Dictionary de Daniel Jones (12th edition), mais il nous res-tait encore à trouver des outils informatiques adéquats c'est-à-dire un « éditeur de texte » pour exploiter les entrées de ce premier corpus. C'est John Gingrich qui, pen-dant des années, devait créer les programmes (en fortran) qui permettaient d'édi-ter le corpus"
The computer and inventories

It was totally new for students taught by Guierre at
the Sorbonne in 1966 to learn that there were 1960
dissyllabic words in the EPD and that 1700 were
perfectly regular in their stress pattern.

Only 260 words could be multi-categorial and
involved in a conflict of rules. Among them, the
alternating pairs (ob'ject, v. vs 'object, n.) are a
minority.
Inventory of alternating pairs

* The attention had been focused since Sheridan's *Rhetorical Grammar* of his 1780 dictionary on these **alternating pairs** as if they were the rule. But in fact verb-noun pairs like **'comfort'** are far more numerous; and corpus linguistics studies have revealed since then that they are far more frequent in actual discourse and texts.
Graphophonemics

**Graphophonemic** rules are also crucial in Guierre's view.

"Règle : Dans les monosyllabes, une voyelle monographe suivie d'une consonne différente de x puis d'un e muet (-VCe) est longue... La recherche sera ici limitée aux monosyllabes (hormis les noms propres). Le *Longman Pronun-cia-tion Dictionary* en contient 4 778, dont 606 monosyllabes perti-nents: la règle vaut pour 97 % (594 mots)."
Variation

Working on newer and older dictionaries we encountered **variation**. Our first theories about variation were revolving around the idea of **conflicts between rules**. And the point was to analyse which type of criteria were at work in the phonological system to choose one or the other.

At a time when generative phonology discovered **rule conspiracies**, we were analysing **rule conflicts** which seemed far more interesting.
Variation and change

More recently the analysis of variants within and
between dictionaries has led us to a closer
examination of how **change** occurs and is recorded in
pronunciation dictionaries and to a sociolinguistic
approach of variation. We have followed John Ohala's
path: "Sound **change** is drawn from a **pool of
synchronic variation**".
Variation in dictionaries

Contemporary variation is better known thanks to
John Wells's “opinion polls” introduced in 1990 as
“**poll panel preferences**”. In the introduction to his
*Pronunciation Dictionary*, §1.1 is devoted to variants,
which shows its importance in Wells's editorial
project.

Since then the notion of a pronouncing dictionary has
shifted a bit more towards a **scientific descriptive
approach** of pronunciation.
Older dictionaries

But the **prescriptivism** of older dictionaries does not
mean however that they should be ignored.

They should be critically examined to understand
what pronouncing a word and pronouncing discourse
**meant** five or eight generations ago. The rationale
behind the variants is largely sociolinguistically
based.
Variation in the 18th century

**Variation in vowels** is produced by a change below the level of consciousness (W. Labov) and is largely a matter of sociolinguistic markers (the prescriptivist's stigmatization of a vowel as "vulgar").

**Variation in stress placement** is of a different nature: learned speakers, who have studied Latin, know where to place stress properly when pronouncing Latin and Latin words in English.

The -`ator stress-pattern was widespread in the 18th c.: *conservator* and *instigator* /2010/ in Perry.

Those who have not studied Latin apply analogy.
Critical study : errors

Our critical attitude has led us to detect errors.
Because there are errors in all dictionaries including
recent ones.

EPD: Gimson, A. C., ed., *English Pronouncing
Dictionary*, XIVth ed.

marmalade, -s 'mɑ:mələd -s
## Errors (2)

* LPD 2008

### Longman Pronunciation Dictionary

PROFESSOR
WELLS

praiseworth|y UK ☰ US ☰ 'praɪz ,wɜ:d |ɪ || - ,wɜ:d |ɪ

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

* Buchanan 1757b *New Pocket-Book*

4 inv'gɒrəte, v. L.
Change of mind

Lexicographers may change their minds

In **Dyche** (1735) the 86 verbs in -ize are mostly stressed on the ending down to the verb *recognize*. From *satyrize* onwards, stress is on the antepenultimate. Among the 61 verbs before *satyrize*, only 15 exceptions (A-S) are to be accounted for.
## Change of mind (2)

In Sheridan (1780) we found a population of 44 words in **-tude**. All of them are unaffected by palatalization in Buchanan's and Walker's dictionaries. Sheridan (1780) has the same attitude with **gra1t'-ty1-tu3de**. At least in volume 1 of the dictionary.

But as of letter L (in vol. 2), we find **lassitude la1s'-sy1-tsho3d**, acknowledging the same full vowel [u:], but palatalizing the /t/.

Sheridan realized at this point the change under way.
Change of mind (3)

• Sheridan 1797 vs Sheridan 1778 after Walker 1791

* Tous les oui de la colonne H de Sheridan-Walker.ods
Changes of mind in Jones's *EPD*

The adjective *pulsatory* is stressed confusingly
throughout the editions of the *EPD*:

*'pulsatory* in EPD1-3, then

*pul'satory*/*'pulsatory* in EPD4-12, then back to

*'pulsatory* in EPD13-14, and finally

*'pulsatory/pul'satory* since Susan Ramsaran's 1988
revision of the 14th editon.

(Castanier & Duchet, EPIP 5, Caen, 2017.)
Discussion

Gimson a probablement estimé dans EPD13 que Jones était allé trop loin, estimant soit que l'accent antépénultième /0100/ n'était pas si fréquent, soit qu'il était prématuré de le consigner en accentuation principale. Mais il s'agissait d'un changement en cours : la variante /0100/ est réapparue pour *pulsatory* dans EPD14R, et on a bien dans LPD /0100/ en prononciation principale.
Dialogue with a lexicographer

jld@roach October 01, 2001 11:09

In your EPD15 transcription you have used [u] in
unstressed prevocalic position (*attenuate*) but reduce
it to schwa before consonants: *formulate*.

Yet in *congratulate*, the first possibility is with lax
[U] rather than schwa. Is this because of the
affricate /tS/ to its left?

Is the difference in the order of variants due to
haphazard fluctuations, or distributional
determination?
Dialogue with a lexicographer (2)

Subject: Re: About u in EPD transcriptions - Date:
Tue, 2 Oct 2001 11:04:47 +0100

Dear Jean-Louis, Thanks for your message. There is, I
must admit, quite a **large random component in
decisions about /u:/, /U/ and /@/", but in general I
prefer to use the [u] option when a vowel follows.
This would explain why *attenuate* has [u] while
*congratulate* does not. However, I have to admit that I
would now be more likely to put /@/ in the latter
case, and I think we **may well consider changing the
order of preferences.** The pronunciation with /U/ has
a rather old-fashioned or over-careful sound to it.
The lexicographer's change of
mind ten years later

EPD 18th ed., 2011

congratu|late

UK ☎ US ☎

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kənˈgrætʃ.ə|leɪt, kən-, -ˈgræt.jʊ-, -jə-, [s] -ˈgrætʃ.ə-, -ˈgrædʒ-, -v-

Just like formulate

'fɔː.mjə|leɪt, -mju-, [s] 'fɔːr.mju-, -mjə-
This is the way with dictionaries...

Thank you for your attention
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