I was recently in a discussion with a friend about the pronunciation of "attribute" as either a noun or a verb. I resorted to OED's authority to back up my own suspicions, and found the pronunciations:
Noun: /ˈatrɪbjuːt/
Verb: /əˈtrɪbjuːt/
For the most part, particularly with regard to the syllable that carries emphasis, this makes sense to me, but I was somewhat surprised at the noun. I'm rather new to the study of pronunciation, but my understanding is that /ˈatrɪbjuːt/ would sound like "Ah" + "Tribute." The first syllable, if I understand correctly, would rhyme with "Rot."
As a native American English speaker, I think of the first syllable of the noun form as rhyming with "Cat," and so it seems to me that there should be an AmE transcription as well, along the lines of:
/ˈætrɪbjuːt/ (bold emphasis mine)
My question is twofold:
-
Is my understanding of the OED pronunciations accurate, that its given noun transcription would rhyme with "rot," at least in BrE?
-
Should there be a separate pronunciation notated for American English? And would /ˈætrɪbjuːt/ be the common accepted form?
I will note that a similar question was asked here (Pronunciation of "Attribute") but it does not address what I am asking (and it has no answers).
For a little extra clarification based on comments, here is what I am seeing in the noun entry for "attribute" in Oxford English Dictionary:
Best Answer
IPA symbols are discrete, but the vowel space is continuous. IPA transcriptions always have a large amount of arbitrariness.
The IPA contains the following three distinct symbols that you should not confuse: <ɑ>, <a>, and <æ>. However, even though you shouldn't confuse them, you should be aware that certain pairs may be interchangeable in certain contexts.
There are two general types of transcription: phonetic and phonemic. Despite the fact that "IPA" stands for "International Phonetic Alphabet", it is not based purely on phonetic principles and it is not only, or even mainly, used for pure phonetic transcription.
It is very often used for phonemic transcription: only noting the contrasts that are relevant for a particular language, but not ones that aren't.
Phonemic transcriptions tend to become conventionalized, which in the case of English means that the same vowel symbols continue to commonly be used for certain vowels that have shifted phonetically.
Major examples are the vowels of "trap", "strut" and "goose". The conventional way to transcribe these phonemes of English in IPA is as /æ/, /ʌ/ and /uː/. In fact, "trap" in a usual contemporary Southern British accent is more like phonetic [a], "strut" is more like [ɐ], and "goose" is more like [ʉ] or [ɵu̯].
See http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-english.htm, http://englishspeechservices.com/blog/british-vowels/
The vowel of "rot" is traditionally transcribed /ɑ/ for an American English accent (more or less [ɑ] phonetically, usually, but perhaps closer to [a] or [ɒ] in certain accents) and /ɒ/ for a British English accent (often closer to [ɔ] phonetically). It isn't the same as the vowel of "attribute" in either of these accents.
IPA symbols that are frequently interchangeable in practice (in some, but not all contexts) include a/ɑ, e/ɛ, o/ɔ, ɔ/ɒ, ɒ/ɑ, ə/ʌ/ɐ, i/ɪ, ɪ/e, u/ʊ, ɨ/ɯ.