Phonetic transcription
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Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual system of symbolization of the sounds occuring in spoken human language. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet (such as the International Phonetic Alphabet).
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Phonetic transcription vs. orthography
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History
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Types of notational systems
Most phonetic transcription is based on the assumption that linguistic sounds are segmentable into discrete units than can be represented by symbols.
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Alphabetic
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is one of the most popular and well-known phonetic alphabets. It was originally created by primarily British language teachers, with later efforts from European phoneticians and linguists. It has changed from its earlier intention as a tool of foreign language pedagogy to a practical alphabet of linguists. It is currently becoming the most often seen alphabet in the field of phonetics.
Another commonly encountered alphabetic tradition is the Americanist phonetic alphabet, originally created for the transcription of Native American and European languages. There exist somewhat similar traditions used by linguists of Indic, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian, and Slavic languages. The difference between these alphabets and IPA is relatively small, although often the specially created characters of the IPA are often abandoned in favour of already existing characters with diacritics (e.g. many characters are borrowed from Eastern European orthographies).
There are also extended versions of the IPA, for example Luciano Canepari's canIPA (http://venus.unive.it/canipa/).
Narrow and broad transcription
There are two general types of alphabetic phonetic transcription: broad transcription and narrow transcription. Broad transcription is usually just a transcriptions of the phonemes of an utterance, whereas narrow transcription encodes information about the phonetic variations of the specific allophones in the utterance.
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Iconic
In iconic phonetic notation, the shapes of the phonetic characters are designed so that they visually represent the position of articulators in the vocal tract. This is unlike alphabetic notation where the correspondence between character shape and articulator position is arbitrary. This notation is potentially more flexible than alphabetic notation in showing more shades of pronunciation (MacMahon 1996:838-841). An example of iconic phonetic notation is the Visible Speech system created by Scottish phonetician, Alexander Melville Bell (Ellis 1869:15).
Analphabetic
Another type of phonetic notation that is more precise than alphabetic notation is analphabetic phonetic notation. Instead of both the alphabetic and iconic notational types' general principle of using one symbol per sound, analphabetic notation uses long sequences of symbols to precisely describe the component features of an articulatory gesture (MacMahon 1996:842-844). This type of notation is reminiscent of the notation used in chemical formulas to denote the composition of chemical compounds. Although more descriptive than alphabetic notation, analphabetic notation is cumbersome to use and much less practical for many purposes (e.g. for descriptive linguists doing fieldwork). As a result, this type of notation is uncommon.
Two examples of this type were developed by the Danish Otto Jespersen (1889) and American Kenneth Pike (1943). An example of Pike's system can be demonstrated by the following. A syllabic voiced alveolar nasal consonant is notated as
- MaIlDeCVoeIpvnnAPpaatdtltnransnsfSpvavdtlvtnransssfTpgagdtlwvtitvransnsfSrpFSs
In Pike's notation there are 5 main components (which are indicated using the example above):
- M - manner of production ( i.e., MaIlDe )
- C - manner of controlling ( i.e., CVoeIpvnn )
- description of the stricture ( i.e., APpaatdtltnransnsfSpvavdtlvtnransssfTpgagdtlwvtitvransnsf )
- S - segment type ( i.e., Srp )
- F - phonetic function ( i.e., FSs )
The components of the notational hierarchy of this consonant are explained below:
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Links
- Phonetics
- International Phonetic Alphabet
- Americanist phonetic notation
- Transliteration
- Eye dialect
- Phonetic™ voicemail transcription service
- Romanization
- Official home page of the IPA (http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html)
- canIPA (http://venus.unive.it/canipa/)
Bibliography
- Albright, Robert W. (1958). The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its background and development. International journal of American linguistics (Vol. 24, No. 1, Part 3); Indiana University research center in anthropology, folklore, and linguistics, publ. 7. Baltimore. (Doctoral dissertation, Standford University, 1953).
- Canepari, Luciano. (2005a). A handbook of phonetics: ‹Natural› phonetics. München: Lincom Europa, pp. 518. ISBN 3-8958-480-3 (hb).
- Ellis, Alexander J. (1869-1889). On early English pronunciation (Parts 1 & 5). London: Philological Society by Asher & Co.; London: Trübner & Co.
- International Phonetic Association. (1949). The principles of the International Phonetic Association, being a description of the International Phonetic Alphabet and the manner of using it, illustrated by texts in 51 languages. London: University College, Department of Phonetics.
- International Phonetic Association. (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65236-7 (hb); ISBN 0-521-63751-1 (pb).
- Jespersen, Otto. (1889). The articulations of speech sounds represented by means of analphabetic symbols. Marburg: Elwert.
- Kelly, John. (1981). The 1847 alphabet: An episode of phonotypy. In R. E. Asher & E. J. A. Henderson (Eds.), Towards a history of phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Kemp, J. Alan. (1994). Phonetic transcription: History. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 6, pp. 3040-3051). Oxford: Pergamon.
- MacMahon, Michael K. C. (1996). Phonetic notation. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Ed.), The world's writing systems (pp. 821-846). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
- Pike, Kenneth L. (1943). Phonetics: A critical analysis of phonetic theory and a technic for the practical description of sounds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Pullum, Geoffrey K.; & Laduslaw, William A. (1986). Phonetic symbol guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-68532-2.
- Sweet, Henry. (1880-1881). Sound notation. Transactions of the Philological Society, 177-235.
- Sweet, Henry. (1971). The indispensible foundation: A selection from the writings of Henry Sweet. Henderson, Eugénie J. A. (Ed.). Language and language learning 28. London: Oxford University Press.