Re: Character Identity and Font Selection

On 2011-06-11, Stephan Stiller <sstiller_at_stanford.edu> wrote:
> I agree: in my experience, most linguists casually use IPA in a phonemic
> manner, exactly in the way Philippe Verdy describes. Italian phonetician
> Luciano Canepari argues that the IPA is used phonemically (not
> phonetically) by most linguists. Some people emphasize a distinction
> between "broad" (essentially phonemic) and "narrow" (more phonetic)
> transcriptions, but most transcriptions are broad. (Interestingly,
> Canepari invented his canIPA as a derivative of IPA more suitable for
> very narrow transcriptions than even IPA with all its diacritics.)

This practice is built in to the IPA, and has been since its
beginning. It's stated in the Principles of the IPA.
I remember getting Canepari's book when I was young; I thought then,
and think with much better confidence now, that it is geekery gone mad
- his level of detail is far beyond the ability of humans to agree on. Even
with years of ear training, phonetic transcribers often don't agree at
the level of detail the IPA alone offers.

> The thing is that, fwiw, often cultural conventions trump accuracy in
> picking symbols for such broad transcriptions. For example, [ə] is used

Again, much of this is in the Principles. It is suggested to use the
most "normal" letter (i.e. from the Latin alphabet) when detail is not
important.

> for the default reduced vowel in many language. (On that note, Korean
> linguists tend to transcribe ㅓ [ɔ] as [ə] for really no good reason at
> all, as it's not actually used a reduced vowel in Korean.) Linguists
> have argued that standard British practice of transcribing the vowel in
> "bet" as [e] is really outdated ([ɛ] is more appropriate). Linguist Ian

According to the Principles, <e> is the right letter for a phonemic
or broad phonetic transcription. However, I don't know where you get
the idea that <e> is the standard letter - the Oxford Dictionaries
use <ɛ>, and so do most of the other examples of English transcription
I recall seeing, even 30 years ago. This is, in any case, influenced
by your view on whether quality or quantity or both is the primary
differentiator between tense and lax vowels in English.

> Maddieson has argued (personal communication) that [ʌ] is not the best
> choice for the vowel in "but". American linguists tend to omit

What does he prefer? My STRUT vowel is probably nearer [ɐ] than
any other letter on the main chart.

> diphthongization and vowel length [:] for vowels. Most linguists pick
> symbols from the "most commonly used" IPA symbols (such as [r] instead
> of the many r-derived symbols), with the rarer used ones appearing

Again, this is explicitly advised in the Principles.

-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.