Towton

Edward Aveyard asked

Would you happen to know how Towton (as in the Battle of Towton, the largest battle on English soil) is pronounced? I am not sure whether this would be ˈtəʊtn or ˈtaʊtn.

I didn’t know, but I knew someone who would: the BBC Pronunciation Unit (blog, 13 April).

My former student Jo Kim, now working for the Unit, replied

Martha [Figueroa-Clark] and I were reading your blog yesterday and were especially grateful for your kind (and informed!) words in our defence. You are quite right, we have been recommending the pronunciation for L'Aquila as LACK-will-uh since 1971 and with a special note to draw attention to first syllable stress. We did all we could to disseminate the information but with the resources we have and being an advisory service, we cannot enforce pronunciations, as you very well know.
As for Towton, we have an entry from 2007, which gives the pronunciation TOW-tuhn (-ow as in now). This is the pronunciation given to us by Dr Buckberry of Bradford University's Towton Mass Grave Project.

So there you have it, Edward: it’s ˈtaʊtn.
The Battle of Towton (1461), fought between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses, was indeed the bloodiest in English history. It is reported that over 80,000 people were killed there, which would represent about 1% of the entire English population at the time.
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This blog will now take an extended post-Easter break. Next entry: 24 May.

VOT is more

Yesterday’s account of aspiration and VOT only covered initial consonants and initial consonant clusters: more precisely, those at the beginning of a stressed syllable. It covered the English aspiration of [p] in words such as page, pick, appear, spin, price, pure, display, of [t] in words such as time, top, attack, stand, tree, and of [k] in words such as coffee, key, account, scanner, cross, clean, accuse.
But what about [p t k] in other positions? In those positions that I (but not everyone) would consider syllable-final?
It is unfortunately the case that English aspiration is not a matter of all or nothing. In some positions voiceless plosives may have a certain amount of aspiration, but not enough to call them fully aspirated. The VOT in such cases is intermediate between that of “aspirated” voiceless plosives and that of “unaspirated” ones.
As I put it in LPD, English [p t k] are aspirated
• when they occur at the beginning of a syllable in which the vowel is strong.
They are unaspirated
• when preceded by s at the beginning of a syllable
• when followed by any FRICATIVE, as in lapse læps, depth depθ
• if immediately followed by another plosive as with the k in doctor ˈdɒktə || ˈdɑːkt^ər. The release stage of the first plosive is then usually inaudible (‘masked’).
Otherwise, they are unaspirated or just slightly aspirated. For example, ripe raɪp, shut ʃʌt, lake leɪk; happy ˈhæpi, writer ˈraɪtə (BrE), lucky ˈlʌki; wasp wɒsp || wɑːsp, restinɡ ˈrestɪŋ, Oscar ˈɒskə || ˈɑːsk^ər, lifted ˈlɪftɪd, today təˈdeɪ.
Peter Roach suggests the useful word potato pəˈteɪtəʊ (BrE). The initial p is unaspirated (because a weak vowel follows). The first t is aspirated (at the beginning of a stressed syllable). The second one is weakly aspirated (at the end of a syllable, I would say; or you could alternatively say because followed by an unstressed vowel).

Spanish [p t k] are always unaspirated. They have zero VOT.

Another phonological feature sometimes claimed to be involved is [spread glottis]. Aspirated stops and voiceless sonorants are then said to share a common feature of aspiration (or [spread glottis]). This helps account for the fact that in some languages unaspirated and aspirated voiceless plosives contrast in word-final position (see the waveforms for Armenian final [k] and [k^h], taken from Ladefoged and Maddieson’s The Sounds of the World’s Languages). It’s no use talking about VOT there: in sentence-final position both possibilities have trivially infinite VOT (there’s no VOT because there’s no voice onset).

VOT is that?

Carlos Leiva writes

Could you speak about VOT in your blog next time? Drawing the differences between English and Spanish VOTs?
While smoking a cigarette, I think I found a difference when pronouncing some words. I mean, the smoke came out from my mouth differently, I think.

As a non-smoker, I cannot comment on the second paragraph. And it’s not altogether clear what Mr Leiva is asking for in the first.
Yes, the [p] in English pair is aspirated, i.e. has a long voice onset time (VOT). There is a substantial delay after the lips separate before the vocal folds kick in with voicing. During this time air from the lungs escapes unobstructed through the oral cavity, sounding “like a little [h]”.
The Spanish [p] in perro is unaspirated, i.e. has zero VOT (or a very short VOT). There is very little or no delay between the labial release and the onset of voicing, so no “little [h]”.
Unlike pair, the [p] in English spare is unaspirated.
In words like pray, play, twin, cure the aspiration is manifested in the voicelessness of the liquid or semivowel; but in spray, splay, obscure in principle not (because the [s] inhibits aspiration).
Aspiration affects all three English voiceless plosives, [p t k].

Spanish [b d g] are voiced throughout. English [b d g] are only partially voiced, unless surrounded by voiced sounds.
Here is a schematic VOT diagram from Cruttenden, Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (7th ed., Hodder, 2008). (Click to enlarge.)So far, this is the information given in all textbooks of phonetics. But there’s more that can be said. We’ll return to the subject tomorrow.
If you want measurements of VOT in milliseconds, consult a textbook or measure a waveform. The usual value given for English VOT in words like pair is of the order of 40-75 ms.

L’Aquila

In last Friday’s Guardian, Alexander Chancellor commented:

It took the BBC all week to master the correct pronunciation of L'Aquila, the Italian city devastated by the earthquake. Broadcasters as famous as John Humphrys and Fiona Bruce started out by calling it la-QUEE-la, but more surprisingly, even reporters on the spot got it wrong.
Duncan Kennedy, who was described by the corporation as its Rome correspondent, also called it la-QUEE-la, while George Alagiah, who had hastened to Italy to address us from among the ruins, gave it the more rarefied pronunciation of la-KEE-la, as if it were a Mexican liqueur. It should, of course, be pronounced LA-qui-la (with the stress on the first syllable).
The BBC's pronunciation research unit is sadly not succeeding in its proclaimed purpose "to ensure that pronunciations used on the BBC are accurate and consistent".

The fault lies not with the BBC Pronunciation Unit, but with newsreaders and reporters who do not bother to consult the database the Unit provides. The Pron Unit will certainly have the correct pronunciation on file, and as far as I am aware always responds promptly and accurately to enquiries.
The name L’Aquila is not in British pronunciation dictionaries (perhaps it ought to be), but it is in the Duden Aussprachewörterbuch, as ˈlaːku̯ila.
Once upon a time any educated person had some knowledge of Latin. Not any more. But classicists will tell you that the Latin word for ‘eagle’, the origin of this name, is ăquĭla (with a short i). As readers of this blog will know by now, a Latin word in which the penultimate vowel is short and not followed by a consonant cluster has its stress on the antepenultimate. This Latin rule still works for Italian, as long as you know the Latin vowel quantity, lost as such in Italian.
And by the way, the Latin word for ‘songs’ is carmĭna, so this word too was/is stressed on the antepenultimate. As far as Orff’s Carmina Burana goes, insisting on this stressing seems to be becoming a lost cause.

ˈmeidʒər | ənˈmainə | \toungruːps | in\iŋgliʃ

In his comment on my posting “punctuation in transcription” (9 April), Peter Roach referred to John Trim’s excellent 1959 article in m.f. 112:26-29.
Although when I vacated my room at UCL I had to get rid of a large number of books (lacking the space to keep them all at home), I nevertheless couldn’t bear to dispose of my collected issues of Le Maître Phonétique. That means I am able to offer you scans of excerpts from the article, to give you a flavour of it.

Let’s hope that one day soon the entire run of mf/JIPA will be digitized and made available to all.

punctuation in transcription

Apropos writing an essay in transcription (blog, 6 April), Eric Armstrong asked

And what do you do about things like question marks? Use phonemic transcription plus punctuation? What is acceptable?

For three-quarters of a century the journal of the International Phonetic Association, then called Le Maître Phonétique (lə mɛːtrə fɔnetik), was written entirely in transcription. Here is an extract from one hundred years ago, from the issue dated vɛ̃tkatriɛm ane 5-6 mɛ - ʒɥœ̃ [sic] 1909.You will see here that the custom was to ignore stress and to use ordinary punctuation, including quotation marks. The asterisk denotes a proper name. This is only what one would expect, given that the early ambition of the IPA was to supplant traditional orthography, at least for language teaching.
And here is an extract from a more recent article, the youthful David Crystal’s ə pəspɛktɪv fə parəlaŋɡwɪdʒ (m.f. 1963, 120: 25-29).Here, too, stress is ignored and ordinary punctuation is used. Additionally we find cited terms in italicized orthography.

obstruent

Martin Ball writes

I have a Speech Pathology colleague (of many years standing) who I have heard several times recently pronounce obstruent as /əbˈstr.../
I was wondering whether this is just because it is a word she had not heard said often (though in this same meeting I had used it several times), or whether this is a recognized US variant (not in LPD).

I share Martin’s bemusement. I have never heard anything but initial stress for this word, ˈɒbstruənt.
All other English words ending in -uent have antepenultimate stress for most of us, too: affluent, effluent, congruent, constituent. However, some Americans do say conˈgruent with penultimate stress, and some do the same with affluent and effluent, so perhaps this is what provided the model for the obˈstruent produced by Martin’s colleague. (But I don’t think even Americans ever say constiˈtuent.)
Classicists will know that the Latin etymon has a short vowel, obstrŭ-ō, -ent-, and therefore initial stress.
Words with other vowel stems plus -ant ~ -ent include brilliant, radiant, valiant, variant, gradient, lenient, prurient (all antepenultimate), but on the other hand compliant and defiant (penultimate, because of the verbs comply and defy).
A word I don’t think I’ve ever encountered outside early nineteenth century poetry is reboant. The OED says it has initial stress, ˈrebəʊənt. Merriam-Webster agrees (sound clip).