Most common sound for words ending in letter "a"

Tue Feb 10 19:38:52 UTC 2009

At 11:16 AM -0600 2/10/09, Scot LaFaive wrote:
>And what nugget of wisdom are we to take away from this data?
>
>Scot

The generalization is not quite accurate as it
stands, either, however profound it may or may
not be.  Besides "ma", "pa" and other
monosyllabic exceptions to the generalization,
there would be instances of stressed final
syllables; "mama" and "papa" end in schwa if they
have penult stress, but /a/ if they're stressed
finally (more common with "papa", I'd think). I
pronounce "dada" with two /a/ vowels if I'm
referring to the art movement and ditto "tata"
('goodbye') and "caca" ('poop').  (Maybe there's
a subregularity affecting words derived from
baby-talk, where reduplication is more of a
factor than least-effort vowel reduction?*) In
any case, the mapping between orthographic final
a and schwa...oops, ~u/uh wouldn't be 100% of
polysyllables in a somewhat larger database.  Bla
bla bla.

LH, thinking that one application of
investigating such correlations would be building
a text-reader for the blind, or the lazy.

*and it extends to other cases of reduplication;
the Wawa chain of convenience stores in the
Northeast is regularly pronounced /'wa "wa/, not
/'wa w@/, where " indicates secondary stress.

>
>
>
>On 2/10/09, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Most common sound for words ending in letter "a"
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  I looked at the truespel database for words ending in letter "a" to see how
>>  they're pronounced as I interpret talking dictionaires saying them.  If you
>>  discount words "sea, tea, la, ta, ha" the sound is 100% ~u (uh).  Note, I
>>  estimate that the top 5k words make up about 90% of the words seen on a page
>>  of typical text.  They are the most popular words.
>>
>>  The copied spreadsheet data at bottom are in the following 4 columns:
>>  tradspel ~truespel  count phoneme
>>
>>  tz
>>
>>
>>
>>  Count of last vowel sounds for words ending in "a"
>>  by Tom Zurinskas - using the truespel spreadsheet database
>>
>>  Data are from Collins Cobuild (15 million words in text)
>>  for the top 5,000 English words in common media text.
>>  My phonetic interpretation is as heard from two USA talking dictionaries
>>
>>  Results
>>  For 99% of USA English words ending in the letter "a"
>>  the sound is ~u (uh) as in the most common  word "a."
>>  Also, take the word "a" out, and it's 84%.
>>
>>  Sound instances words  top word
>>  ~u (uh) 455798 38 a
>>  ~ee  4412 2 tea
>>  ~aa (ah) 1515 3 la
>>  461725
>>
>>  instance count  455,798
>>  word count  43
>>
>>  tradspel ~truespel  count phoneme
>>
>>  a ~u 419,798 ~u
>>  idea ~ieddeeyu 4,847 ~u
>>  area ~aireeyu 3,558 ~u
>>  sea ~see 2,831 ~ee
>>  America ~Ummairiku 2,417 ~u
>>  Africa ~Afriku 2,057 ~u
>>  tea ~tee 1,581 ~ee
>>  extra ~ekstru 1,432 ~u
>>  china ~Chienu 1,106 ~u
>>  India ~Indeeyu 1,058 ~u
>>  data ~daetu 831 ~u
>>  Barbara ~Baarbru 829 ~u
>>  media ~meedeeyu 766 ~u
>>  Australia ~austrralyu 657 ~u
>>  California ~Kaliffornyu 636 ~u
>>  la ~laa 625 ~aa
>>  Rhoda ~Roedu 616 ~u
>>  Russia ~Rushu 569 ~u
>>  Frederica ~Frederreeku 557 ~u
>>  ta ~taa 516 ~aa
>>  propaganda ~praapuggandu 477 ~u
>>  Asia ~Aezhu 461 ~u
>>  flora ~floru 442 ~u
>>  Eva ~Eevu 437 ~u
>>  formula ~formyuelu 429 ~u
>>  camera ~kamru 425 ~u
>>  Canada ~Kanudu 422 ~u
>>  opera ~aapru 407 ~u
>>  era ~eeru 407 ~u
>>  drama ~draamu 404 ~u
>>  Ira ~Ieru 377 ~u
>>  ha ~haa 374 ~aa
>>  sofa ~soefu 360 ~u
>>  via ~veeyu 336 ~u
>>  vita ~veetu 331 ~u
>>  Virginia ~Verjjinyu 318 ~u
>>  Etta ~Etu 318 ~u
>>  Cuba ~Kyuebu 317 ~u
>>  cinema ~sinimu 313 ~u
>>  Victoria ~Vikttoreeyu 294 ~u
>>  Patricia ~Putrrishyu 292 ~u
>>  Marsha ~Maarshu 290 ~u
>>  Scylla ~Silu 280 ~u
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>>  see truespel.com
>>  _________________________________________________________________
>  > Windows Live: Keep your life in sync.
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