The sound layer of the novel described with the categories of the
International Phonetic Alphabet: phonemes instead of letters,
articulation instead of orthography, sonority and lexical stress as
measures of "musicality".
1. Method and coverage
I transcribed the text into IPA phonemes: 80.54% of word
occurrences were found in the CMU pronouncing dictionary (ARPABET
mapped onto IPA); the remaining 19.46% — Joyce's
coinages — I transcribed with grapheme-to-phoneme rules (an
approximation of English pronunciation; a heuristic, not a
philological transcription). Total: 869,056 phonemes.
2. Phoneme inventory
Vowels make up 38.8% of all phonemes.
Most frequent phonemes: /ɪ/ 6.779%, /n/ 6.614%, /t/ 5.961%, /s/ 5.843%, /ɹ/ 5.603%, /l/ 4.825%, /ə/ 4.775%, /ɛ/ 4.703%, /d/ 4.386%, /æ/ 4.209%, /ʌ/ 3.217%, /m/ 3.15%, /k/ 3.02%, /ɑ/ 2.962%.
3. Consonants by the IPA chart (manner × place)
bilabial
labiodental
dental
alveolar
postalveolar
palatal
velar
labial-velar
glottal
plosive
b 2.2% p 2.2%
t 6.0% d 4.4%
k 3.0% ɡ 1.0%
affricate
dʒ 0.5% tʃ 0.5%
fricative
f 2.0% v 1.8%
ð 2.4% θ 0.6%
s 5.8% z 2.1%
ʃ 0.7% ʒ 0.0%
h 2.1%
nasal
m 3.1%
n 6.6%
ŋ 1.1%
lateral
l 4.8%
approximant
ɹ 5.6%
j 0.6%
w 2.1%
Values: phoneme share among all 869,056 phonemes of the text.
4. Vowel space (height × backness)
near-close, front: 6.8%
mid, central: 6.3%
open-mid, front: 4.7%
near-open, front: 4.2%
open-mid, central: 3.2%
open, back: 3.0%
close, front: 2.7%
open, front: 2.3%
open-mid, back: 1.6%
close, back: 1.5%
5. Sonority — the "melody" of words
The sonority hierarchy (the higher, the more "singable"; scale
1–10): open vowels 10 … close 8, approximants /j w ɹ/ 7, lateral /l/ 6,
nasals /m n ŋ/ 5, voiced fricatives 4 / voiceless 3, affricates 2.5,
voiced plosives 2 / voiceless 1. Examples: /ɑ/ 10, /ɛ/ 9, /i/ 8, /j/ 7, /l/ 6, /n/ 5, /z/ 4, /s/ 3, /tʃ/ 2.5, /b/ 2, /p/ 1.
Mean sonority (per distinct word) of the book's English words:
5.531; of Joyce's coinages: 5.736 — the
invented words are
more sonorous
than the ordinary English of the same book.
Stress patterns of polysyllabic words (from CMUdict; DA = stressed
syllable):
stressed monosyllable (DA): 112,075 occurrences
unstressed monosyllable (da): 28,676 occurrences
trochee (DA-da): 22,092 occurrences
iamb (da-DA): 4,389 occurrences
dactyl (DA-da-da): 2,759 occurrences
amphibrach (da-DA-da): 1,975 occurrences
spondee (DA-DA): 1,522 occurrences
101: 770 occurrences
The dominance of the trochee (DA-da) over the iamb (da-DA) follows
the natural pulse of English vocabulary — the rhythm of lullaby and
ballad. On average 1.539 syllables per word.
Distribution: 1 syll.: 146,056, 2 syll.: 43,619, 3 syll.: 18,802, 4 syll.: 7,416, 5 syll.: 2,396, 6 syll.: 638, 7 syll.: 144, 8 syll.: 115.