Phonetic transcription
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Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual system of symbolization of the sounds occurring 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
[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]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.
[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]Alphabetic
Image:Ipa-chart-all-1000px.png 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: extIPA, VoQs, and Luciano Canepari's 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.
[[Category:{{{1|}}} articles with sections needing expansion]]copied from IPA:
Phonetic transcription should be enclosed in square brackets ("[ ]"). A transcription that specifically denotes only phonological contrasts may be enclosed in slashes ("/ /") instead. If you are in doubt, it is best to use brackets, for by setting off a transcription with slashes you are making a theoretical claim that every symbol within is phonemically contrastive for the language you are transcribing.
For phonetic transcriptions, there is flexibility in how closely you transcribe sounds. A transcription that gives only a basic idea of the sounds of a language in the broadest terms is called a "broad transcription"; in some cases this may be equivalent to a phonemic transcription (only without any theoretical claims). A close transcription, indicating precise details of the sounds, is called a "narrow transcription". These are not binary choices, but the ends of a continuum, with many possibilities in between. All are enclosed in brackets.
For example, in some dialects the English word pretzel in a narrow transcription would be Template:IPA, which notes several phonetic features that may not even be evident to a native speaker. An example of a broader transcription is Template:IPA, which only indicates some of the features that are easier to hear. A yet broader transcription would be Template:IPA. Here every symbol represents an unambiguous speech sound, but without making any claims as to their status in the language.
There are also several possibilities in how to transcribe this word phonemically, but here the differences are not of precision, but of analysis. For example, pretzel could be Template:IPA or Template:IPA. The special symbol for English r is not used, for it is not meaningful to distinguish it from a rolled r. The differences in the letter e reflect claims as to what the essential difference is between the vowels of pretzel and pray; there are half a dozen ideas in the literature as to what this may be. The second transcription claims that there are two vowels in the word, even if they can't both be heard, while the first claims there is only one.
Occasionally a transcription will be enclosed in pipes ("| |"). This goes beyond phonology into morphological analysis. For example, the words cats and dogs could be transcribed phonetically as Template:IPA and Template:IPA, and phonemically as Template:IPA and Template:IPA. Because /s/ and /z/ are separate phonemes in English (unlike Spanish, for example), they received separate symbols in the phonemic analysis. However, you probably recognize that underneath this, they represent the same plural ending. This can be indicated with the pipe notation. If you believe the plural ending is essentially an s, as English spelling would suggest, the words can be transcribed Template:IPA and Template:IPA. If, as most linguists would probably suggest, it is essentially a z, these would be Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
To avoid confusion with IPA symbols, it may be desirable to specify that the native orthography is being used, so that, for example, cats is not read as "chats". This is done with angle brackets or chevrons: 〈cats〉. It is also common to italicize such words, but the chevrons indicate specifically that they are in the original orthography, and not in English transliteration.
Iconic
Image:VisibleSpeech-illustrations.jpg 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 less practical for many purposes (e.g. for descriptive linguists doing fieldwork or for speech pathologists impressionistically transcribing speech disorders). 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). Pike's system, which is part of a larger goal of scientific description of phonetics, is particularly interesting in its challenge against the descriptional method of the phoneticians who created alphabetic systems like the IPA. 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 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:
|
|
|
See also
- Phonetics
- International Phonetic Alphabet
- Americanist phonetic notation
- Finno-Ugric transcription
- Transliteration
- Eye dialect
- Phonetic™ voicemail transcription service
- Romanization
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, Stanford 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 indispensable foundation: A selection from the writings of Henry Sweet. Henderson, Eugénie J. A. (Ed.). Language and language learning 28. London: Oxford University Press.
External links
de:Transkription (Konversationsanalyse) it:Trascrizione fonetica ko:음성 기호 pl:Transkrypcja fonetyczna