320 BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL 



words "have" and "give" together contribute 1.1 per cent more to 

 conversation, so that the net difference in "v" is to be traced to small 

 accretions from the whole vocabulary rather than a few specific words. 



Relative Occurrence of Combinations of Sounds 



A more elaborate analysis of the phonetic syllable is given in Table 

 XII, which shows, for each vowel, the frequency of occurrence of the 

 consonants preceding the vowel and also of the consonants which follow 

 the vowel. The complete word list (except articles) was used as a 

 basis. The cases in which no consonant occurs in front of the vowel 

 are included, as well as the cases in which there is no following con- 

 sonant. These figures are shown as a double column under the key 

 word denoting the vowel sound. In each double column the figures 

 on the left apply to initial consonants and on the right to final con- 

 sonants. The figures are given in per cent, so that each column adds 

 to 100. The consonants are grouped by phonetic classes. The table 

 is to be read as follows: of the syllables in which the vowel sound is that 

 in "pan," 28 per cent begin with "th" (as in "that"), 26 per cent have 

 no initial consonant, 16 per cent begin with "h," 7 per cent with "k," 

 6 per cent with compound consonants, 5 per cent with "b," etc.; while 

 29 per cent end with compound consonants, 27 per cent with "t," 

 etc. Where no figure is entered the occurrences were less than 0.5 

 per cent ; where a dash is shown no combinations of the kind indicated 

 were observed. If the figures are taken by rows instead of columns 

 no meaning can be attached to them before they are multiplied by the 

 relative occurrence of the different vowels. 



In studying this table it is to be remembered that because the dif- 

 ferent vowels have very different frequencies of occurrence the sub- 

 divided data shown in different columns cannot be considered as equally 

 representative. Syllables having the vowel as in "pin," for example, 

 were present, as shown in Table VIII, to the number of 0.1027 X 

 92,522, or 9,500. The syllables in this class which begin with "t" are 

 shown in Table XII to be 1 per cent, representing 95 occurrences. In 

 the class having the vowel of "poise," however, there were only 176 

 examples, so that the 37 per cent of these syllables beginning with "p" 

 result from only 65 occurrences. 



It is to be seen that only one vowel, "pool," is preceded by a par- 

 ticular sound more than 50 per cent of the time, this sound naturally 

 being "y." Six vowels are preceded by particular sounds more than 

 25 per cent of the time. The sounds of "pair," "purr," "par" and 

 "differ" must be followed by "r," a blank, or a compound consonant 

 beginning with "r," as a result of the way in which the analysis was 



