English phonetics with computer

In this lecture, which was originally delivered at a scholarly meeting of IFA, I take an overview of the most common types of computer applications which can assist teaching and learning English phonetics: concordancers, machine-readable dictionaries (MRDs) and CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) packages. Advantages and problems are discussed and illustrated with examples, such as:


LMC concordance for "*[ra] [aeoui]*" (489 lines)

y green man signal is showing.) After a short time, the green man signal w

day seven days a week, you see; and after about a month I was getting pretty g

e so suddenly come into prominence. After all, we have had an industrial syste

lise they are pregnant. Adoption is another option, but is a less popular cho

utifully looked after. Couldn't be better if they were at home. You've not

etter housed than ever before - and better educated? Of course we are: most, b

t people would know. I mean there's her and Mr Gorbachev and you struggle to

whether her birthday falls before or after the end of the school year.

The accident happened when one of our editors (who wishes to remain anonymou

ver, have been changed to preserve their anonymity. Becoming pregnant and

" <ART6> Mineral oils come under examination CONSUMERS who regula

ch a task? I think every one of us, whether old or young, powerful or powerles

e. But if you do inject, always use your own set of works. Never share with a

Zebra crossing. The most dangerous area is usually marked with zigzag lines -

icle's breakdown occurred within my area of responsibility. I was very sorry

supposed to be, you know, the black area in London you find, sort of middle-c

lable at the beauty salon. Barbara is planning to introduce a specia

st of King's College, who moved to California in 1987. Dr Joan White

niques employed: editing decisions, camera angles, the way images are juxtapos

times to the States, I've been to Canada and I've been to every European cou

ar it said that we are entering the era of `the Learning Society'. Let us hope

d it to be? Diane Abbott: I had an idea of what being an MP was like. I had b

quite easily give a concert on just marimba on its own umm if the organisers

ubject can be treated in different media or from different points of view.

assed to Bernard as he sped through Rwanda and at the time he was sceptical an

gnancy which he puts over well. The saga of fellow tourist Faustin Lusangana

vicious, all-night shelling between Syria and Christian gunners who targeted

mably, access to this land would be via our drive, which is eight feet in widt

s at subways, footbridges, islands, Zebra and Pelican crossings, traffic light


Early text-to-IPA conversion on Sinclair ZX-Spectrum

Spectrum Text-to-IPA

The program illustrated on the left attempted to transcribe phonetically a randomly generated nonsense CVCVC letter string ('word') using a few simple grapho-phonemic rules of English. What is most interesting in its operation is not so much that it succeeds most of the time, but the nature of errors or doubtful readings it makes. These can be used with students of EFL for discussion.