ALLITERATION |INTRODUCTION|.

This Vocabulary of Alliteration is a new aid in writing poems and songs, and in the study of phonetic or phonemic syllable divisions. Alliteration is one of several aural devices in literature making use of the repetition of single sounds or groups of sounds. It is quite often believed to be nothing else than the repetition of word-initial sounds, especially consonants. For such rough and ready alliteration a special dictionary would hardly be needed.

However, if alliteration is, in a more sophisticated and traditional fashion, interpreted as the repetition of speech sounds at the beginning of syllables, and ofstressed syllables only, then word-initial consonance or assonance need not be alliteration and vice versa. (So that rough does not alliterate with a word likereward but with, for instance, ignoramus.) The first syllables of words often do not receive primary stress in the present language, not even secondary stress, and therefore specially prepared lists of words of which the stressed syllables start with the same sound or sounds will be of interest to anyone studying or creating aural effects and imagery in verbal communication.

From its very beginning (48 years after the end of the Second World War) this dictionary, a labor of love, has been used for TRINPsite poems and songs, such as Saxifrax (with an aural analysis). On 55.49.4, that is, after seven years, all twenty consonants that can play a role in alliteration and all fifteen vowels became accessible to the general public on the Internet.