Talk:Byron (name)

Pronunciation

D. Jones & A. C. Gimson (1977) give /ˈbaɪərən/ while John S. Kenyon & Thomas A. Knott (1944) give /ˈbaɪrən/. It might be a common UK vs. US pronunciation but Jones & Gimson give also /ˌbaɪəˈrɒnɪk/ which sounds rather odd to me. Besides /aɪə/ is not a triphthong listed in Help:IPA for English and from that example it is clear that they don't mean /aɪər/. I think it might be something like /ˈbaɪərən/ and /ˌbaɪəˈrɒnɪk/, but I'm not sure. Could you help me to solve this little problem? Thanks in advance.--Carnby (talk) 22:51, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect they do mean /aɪər/, and just splitting off the /r/ with the stress mark. — kwami (talk) 00:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The OED has /ˈbaɪərənɪz(ə)m/ and /baɪˈrɒnɪk/. AFAIK, /aɪər/ and /aɪr/ are the same thing. — kwami (talk) 00:20, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For Byron, both LPD and CEPD give /ˈbaɪər.ən/. For Byronic, LPD gives /baɪə.ˈrɒn.ɪk/, while CEPD gives /baɪ.ˈrɒn.ɪk/. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 01:31, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Could we say it's By·ron /ˈbaɪrən/ in US English (and elsewhere), while it's Byr·on /ˈbaɪərən/ in RP?--Carnby (talk) 08:22, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, not according to the sources I cited, which say that the pronunciation is the same in both RP and GA. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 08:58, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So, according to your sources, it should be always syllabified Byr·on?--Carnby (talk) 12:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

All I know is that that is how they syllabify it. Apparently it is a must, because according to both LPD and CEPD /ən/ in this word can be realized as either [ən] or [n̩]. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 12:18, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

But the problem is /r/ of Byron, not /ən/. In other words, does /r/ belong to the first syllable (coda) or to the second one (onset)?--Carnby (talk) 14:01, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

According to both of those dictionaries /r/ is the coda of the first syllable. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 14:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know whether Merriam-Webster is reliable as far as syllabification is concerned, but it says By·ron. And so does the American Heritage Dictionary.--Carnby (talk) 17:41, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, then it's a minor disagreement between sources. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 19:23, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would think, as a matter of course, we would tend to syllabify an intervocalic r with the second syllable unless the first syllable's vowel is modified by the /r/. It might be helpful to look at similar words like barren, siren, and whoring and see how they are syllabified. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 05:56, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

My proposal is ( /ˈbaɪərən/ or /ˈbaɪrən/) because the present /ˈbaɪərən/ could be interpreted /ˈbaɪərən/ (with three syllables, dividing /aɪ/ and /ə/!) or /ˈbaɪrən/.--Carnby (talk) 12:53, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

After second-guessing myself at Aneurin Barnard, I wondered what the difference of /aɪərV/ and /aɪrV/ is and made some searches, and all I could find was this thread. But upon giving some thought, I believe /ˈbaɪrən/ is correct, at least in our transcription system.

First, it should be noted that in General American it is unambiguously /aɪr/ because GA doesn't have triphthongs (unless the word is trisyllabic, which it is not according to CEPD/LPD). So the question is only whether the first vowel is a diphthong or triphthong in Received Pronunciation. And in British English, the second segment in a diphthong followed by /ə/ (as in player, fire, employer, mower, our) can be omitted (Cruttenden 2014: 150–1), a phenomenon known as smoothing or compression. And if you look up fire, tire, diary, desirous, etc. in LPD and CEPD, you can see that smoothing is indicated by the italicized [ɪ]. But in Byron, it's [ə] that's indicated to be optional, not [ɪ]. You can confirm this is not a misprint by looking up siren, pirate, irony, environment, Cyrus, Irish, etc. So the first vowel in Byron is not a triphthong but a diphthong, at least phonemically. (Also note that LPD transcribes e.g. care in GA as [keᵊr], indicating a schwa-like glide may be heard before /r/, even though it is phonemically, unambiguously, /kɛr/ (see his Accents of English, 1982).) Nardog (talk) 05:13, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A couple remarks in regard to the comments from 2015 above:

Syllabification is not conclusive in this case. There is no widely agreed-upon method of syllabifying English words (English phonology § Phonotactics). Merriam-Webster fully adopts the maximal onset principle while CEPD and American Heritage treat consonants after checked vowels as codas, and LPD employs a more elaborate, complex system. All of these except LPD agree that /r/ in Byron belongs to the second syllable, but in analyses that establish triphthongal phonemes (which is common as far as RP is concerned), /ˈbaɪərən/ and /ˈbaɪrən/ are equally probable options.
I believe a syllabic /n/ is not found after any sonorant. Writing ən and not ə|n in {{IPAc-en}} suggests [ˈbaɪ(ə)rn̩] is a plausible articulation, which I don't think it is unless we're talking about informal speech.

Nardog (talk) 07:04, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]