310 BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



TABLE VII 



Types of Phonetic Syllables in telephone Conversation 

 Relative Occurrence per Hundred 

 Type Occurrence 



V 9.7 



VC 20.3 



CV 21.8 



CVC 33.5 



VCC 2.8 



CCV 0.8 



CVCC 7.8 



CCVC 2.8 



CCVCC 00.5 



100.0 



respectively, and the letters CC are used to denote a compound con- 

 sonant form, that is, two or more consecutive consonants. It may be 

 seen that the typical syllable is of the CVC type, closely followed in 

 importance by the CV and VC types. The syllables having two or 

 more consecutive consonants form about one seventh of the total. 



Speech Sounds 



The analysis of the words into their constituent sounds was at- 

 tended by certain difficulties which should be borne in mind in consider- 

 ing the tables which follow. It was not feasible to record the original 

 words phonetically, just as they were pronounced by the telephone 

 subscriber. Instead the words were recorded and their phonetic 

 values assigned later. In so doing the dictionary was not adopted as 

 an authority for the pronunciation since in the informality of conversa- 

 tion, even among educated persons, there are elisions and changes of 

 stress which cause departures from the dictionary standard. Certain 

 very common words, for example, receive various treatments in con- 

 versation, depending on their situation In the sentence, the emphasis 

 desired and the speed of talking. The word "and" may be pronounced 

 as spelled, but quite often it is reduced to " 'nd" or even " 'n'. " 

 The prepositions "to" and "of" are similarly varied. Altogether 

 about 40 common words were found, of this type, each of which seemed 

 subject to several different pronunciations, even in speech which would 

 not be regarded as unduly careless. These were all from the minor 

 classes: auxiliary verbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. 

 The modification, in general, is such as to give the vowel its unstressed 

 value. In the analysis these different forms are included, the weight- 

 ing for each modification necessarily being a matter of judgment. 

 The remaining words were each assigned a single pronunciation, 

 selecting that which we regarded as being the typical pronunciation 



