THE WORDS AND SOUNDS OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION 315 



commonest words seem to determine the relative frequency of the 

 sounds of conversation, the writers are encouraged to believe that if 

 this study were repeated on telephone calls of which a greater propor- 

 tion were social rather than business in nature the analysis into sounds 

 would be changed very little. Likewise the conclusion is drawn that 

 if the study were prolonged tenfold so as to double the number of dif- 

 ferent words no material change in the relative frequency of the sounds 



would be found. 



TABLE X 



Relative Occurrence of Speech Sounds in Telephone Conversations 



Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs 



VoiL'els 



Initial Consonants 



Final Consonants 



10.63 

 7.56 

 7.19 

 6.38 

 5.96 

 5.78 

 5.40 

 5.25 

 4.59 

 4.01 

 2.49 

 1.83 

 1.58 

 1.53 

 1.39 

 1.33 

 .49 

 .35 



73.74 



Unaccented Vowels 



differ 5.79 



receive 5.73 



possible 4.82 



obout 3.96 



wanted 2.54 



peop/f- 1.76 



notion 1.66 



pen. . 

 pin. . . 

 pane, 

 pole . . 

 pawn . 

 peel . . 

 pine, 

 pun. . 

 pot . . 

 pan. . 

 pull., 

 pout . 

 pair. . 

 par. . 

 pool . . 

 purr. . 

 pew . . 

 poise . 



Total number. 



26.26 



100.00 

 50,161 



S 



N 



T 



M 



G 



K 



L 



D 



W 



B 



R 



P 



F 



SH 



TH' 



H 



J 



Y 



V 



TH" 



CH 



Z 



ZH 



NG 



Compounds 



PR . 



ST . 



TR . 



PL . 



HVV . 



KW . 



BL . 



SP . 



KL . 



GR . 

 Others. 



8.34 

 7.94 

 7.55 

 7.40 

 6.87 

 6.70 

 6.65 

 5.25 

 4.86 

 4.38 

 4.11 

 4.06 

 3.88 

 2.42 

 2.41 

 2.38 

 1.33 

 1.25 

 1.21 

 .97 

 .87 

 .55 

 .03 



91.86 



1.69 



1.39 



1.11 



.58 



.49 



.44 



.37 



.30 



.29 



.27 



1.21 



8.14 



k 



m 



s 



d 



z 



P 



V 



f 

 th" 



ch 

 b 



g 

 sh 



J 



th' 



zh 



h 



w 



Compounds 



nt 



St 



nd . 



nk . 

 Id 

 rz 



ks . 



kt . 



rd . 

 ns 

 Others. 



14.64 



13.53 



9.99 



8.62 



5.10 



4.96 



4.50 



3.89 



3.66 



2.42 



2.00 



1.94 



1.28 



.82 



.81 



.73 



.66 



.57 



.24 



.07 



.02 



80.45 



3.37 



2.07 



1.66 



1.32 



1.31 



.98 



.82 



.73 



.64 



.54 



6.11 



19.55 



100.00 

 40.107 



100.00 

 37,493 



