Issues in the pronunciation of proper names : the experience

This paper discusses several relevant issues concerning the pronunciation of proper names. Although it was motivated by the experience of the ONOMASTICA European project, it reeects a personal view, not constituting, therefore, an oocial document of the project. The major outcome of the project was the production of two important linguistic resources: the set of 11 national pronunciation lexica and the inter-language pronunciation lexica. The paper starts by a description of the goals of the consortium, followed by the format and contents of the two lexica. It then addresses the problem of automatic grapheme-to-sound conversion, whose application is almost mandatory for the development of such large-scale resources, and describes and compares several of the methods adopted during the project. The two types of lexica are discussed, with an emphasis respectively on the pronunciation of acronyms and the nativization of the pronunciation of foreign names.