Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

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Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityHow do Swedish encyclopedia users want pronunciationto be presented?Michaël StenbergCentre for Languages and Literature, Lund UniversityAbstractThis paper about presentation of pronunciationin Swedish encyclopedias is part of a doctoraldissertation in progress. It reports on a panelsurvey on how users view presentation of pronunciationby transcriptions and recordings,so-called audio pronunciations. The followingmain issues are dealt with: What system shouldbe used to render stress and segments? Forwhat words should pronunciation be given(only entry headwords or other words as well)?What kind of pronunciation should be presented(standard vs. local, original language vs.swedicized)? How detailed should a phonetictranscription be? How should ‘audio pronunciations’be recorded (human vs. syntheticspeech, native vs. Swedish speakers, male vs.female speakers)? Results show that a clearmajority preferred IPA transcriptions to ‘respelledpronunciation’ given in ordinary orthography.An even vaster majority (90%) didnot want stress to be marked in entry headwordsbut in separate IPA transcriptions. Onlya small number of subjects would consider usingaudio pronunciations made up of syntheticspeech.IntroductionIn spite of phonetic transcriptions having beenused for more than 130 years to show pronunciationin Swedish encyclopedias, very littleis known about the users’ preferences and theiropinion of existing methods of presenting pronunciation.I therefore decided to procure informationon this. Rather than asking a randomsample of more than 1,000 persons, as incustomary opinion polls, I chose to consult asmaller panel of persons with a high probabilityof being experienced users of encyclopedias.This meant a qualitative metod and more qualifiedquestions than in a mass survey.MethodA questionnaire made up of 24 multiple choicequestions was compiled. Besides these, therewere four introductory questions about age andlinguistic background. In order to evaluate thequestions, a pilot test was first made, with fiveparticipants: library and administrative staff,and students of linguistics, though not specializingin phonetics. This pilot test, conducted inMarch 2009, resulted in some of the questionsbeing revised for the sake of clarity.The survey proper was carried out inMarch―April 2009. Fifty-four subjects between19 and 80 years of age, all of them affiliatedto Lund University, were personally approached.No reward was offered for participating.Among them were librarians, administrativestaff, professors, researchers and students.Their academic studies comprised Linguistics(including General Linguistics andPhonetics) Logopedics, Audiology, Semiology,Cognitive Science, English, Nordic Languages,German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish,Russian, Latin, Arabic, Japanese, TranslationProgram, Comparative Literature, Film Studies,Education, Law, Social Science, Medicine,Biology and Environmental Science. A majorityof the subjects had Swedish as their firstlanguage; however, the following languageswere also represented: Norwegian, Dutch, German,Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian,Bulgarian and Hebrew.The average time for filling in the 11-pagequestionnaire was 20 minutes. Each questionhad 2―5 answer options. As a rule, only one ofthem should be marked, but for questionswhere more than one option was chosen, eachsubject’s score was evenly distributed over theoptions marked. Some follow-up questionswere not to be answered by all subjects. In asmall number of cases, questions were mistakenlyomitted. The percentage of answers for acertain option has always been based on theactual number of subjects who answered eachquestion. For many of the questions, an opportunityfor comments was provided. In a fewcases, comments made by subjects have led toreinterpretation of their answers, i.e., if thechoice of a given option does not coincide with214
Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm Universitya comment on it, the answer has been interpretedin accordance with the comment.Questions and resultsThe initial question concerned the main motivefor seeking pronunciation advice in encyclopedias.As might have been expected, a vast majority,69%, reported that they personally wantedto know the pronunciation of items theywere looking up, but, interestingly enough, for13%, the reason was to resolve disputes aboutpronunciation. Others used the pronunciationadvice to feel more secure in company or toprepare themselves for speaking in public.When it came to the purpose of the advicegiven, almost half of the subjects (44%) wantedit to be descriptive (presenting one or more existingpronunciations). The other options wereprescriptive and guiding, the latter principle beingadopted by several modern encyclopedias.For entries consisting of personal names, astriking majority, 97%, wanted pronunciationto be given not only for second (family) names,but also for first names, at least for persons whoare always referred to by both names. This resultis quite contrary to the prevalent traditionin Sweden, where pronunciation is provided exclusivelyfor second names. Somewhat surprisingly,a majority of 69% wanted pronunciation(or stress) only to be given for entry headings,not for scientific terms mentioned later. Of theremaining 31%, however, 76% wanted stress tobe marked in scientific terms, e.g., Calendulaofficinalis, mentioned either initially only oralso further down in the article text.Notation of prosodic featuresThe next section covered stress and tonal features.46% considered it sufficient to markmain stress, whereas main plus secondary stresswas preferred by 31%. The rest demanded evena third degree of stress to be featured. Such asystem has been used in John Wells’s LongmanPronunciation Dictionary, but was abandonedwith its 3rd edition (2008).70% of the subjects wanted tonal features tobe dipslayed, and 75% of those thoughtSwedish accent 1 and 2 and the correspondingNorwegian tonelag features would suffice to beshown.A number of systems for marking stressexist, both within phonetic transcriptions insquare brackets and outside these, in wordswritten in normal orthography. In table 1examples of systems for marking stress in entryheadings are given. However, subjects showeda strong tendency to dislike having stressmarked in entry headings. As many as 90%favoured a separate IPA transcription instead.According to the comments made, the reasonwas that they did not want the image of theorthograpic word to be disturbed by signs thatcould possibly be mistaken for diacritics.Table 1 shows five different ways ofmarking stress in orthographic words that thepanel had to evaluate. The corresponding IPAtranscriptions of the four words would be[noˈbɛl], [ˈmaŋkəl], [ˈramˌløːsa] and [ɧaˈmɑːn].Table 1. Examples of systems for marking mainstress in orthographic words: (a) IPA system asused by Den Store Danske Encyklopædi, (b) Nationalencyklopedin& Nordisk Familjebok 2nd edn.system, (c) SAOL (Swedish Academy Wordlist),Svensk uppslagsbok & NE:s ordbok system, (d) BraBöckers lexikon & Lexikon 2000 system, (e) Brockhaus,Meyers & Duden Aussprachewörterbuch system.1(a) Noˈbel ˈMankell ˈRamlösa schaˈman(b) Nobe´l Mańkell Ra´mlösa schamań(c) Nobel´ Man´kell Ram´lösa schamań(d) Nobel Mankell Ramlösa schaman(e) Nobel Mankell Ramlösa schamaṉIn case stress was still to be marked in entryheadings, the subjects’ preferences for theabove systems were as follows:(a) : 51 %(b) : 11 %(c) : 9 %(d) : 6 %(e) : 20 %As the figures show, this meant a strong supportfor IPA, whereas three of the systemswidely used in Sweden were largely dismissed.System (e) is a German one, used in works withMax Mangold in the board of editors. It has thesame economic advantages as (c), and is wellsuited for Swedish, where quantity is complementarydistributed between vowels and consonantsin stressed syllables. System (d), whichdoes not account for quantity, can be seen as asimplification of (e). It seems to have been introducedin Sweden by Bra Böckers Lexikon, avery widespread Swedish encyclopedia, havingthe Danish work Lademanns Leksikon as its215
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