Phonetic transcription also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation is a visual description of speech sounds or phones by means of symbols. The almost common type of phonetic transcription uses the phonetic alphabet, such(a) as the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Most phonetic transcription is based on the given that linguistic sounds are segmentable into discrete units that can be represented by symbols. many different nature of transcription, or "notation", defecate been tried out: these may be shared into Alphabetic which are based on the same principle as that which governs ordinary alphabetic writing, namely that of using one single simple symbol to represent each sound in addition to Analphabetic notations which are not alphabetic which survive used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters sound by a composite symbol shown up of a number of signs add together.
The Webster's Third New International Dictionary, avoid phonetic transcription in addition to instead employ respelling systems based on the English alphabet, with diacritical marks over the vowels and stress marks. See Pronunciation respelling for English for a generic version.
Another ordinarily encountered alphabetic tradition was originally created by American linguists for the transcription of ] by linguists of Slavic, Indic, Semitic, Uralic here asked as the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet and Caucasian languages. This is often labeled the Americanist phonetic alphabet despite having been widely used for languages outside the Americas. The principal difference between these alphabets and the IPA is that the specially created characters of the IPA are abandoned in favour of already existing typewriter characters with diacritics e.g. numerous characters are borrowed from Eastern European orthographies or digraphs. Examples of this transcription may be seen in Pike's Phonemics and in many of the papers reprinted in Joos's Readings in Linguistics 1. In the days ago it was possible to make phonetic fonts for computer printers and computerized typesetting, this system allowed fabric to be typed on existing typewriters to create printable material.
There are also extended versions of the IPA, for example: .
The phonemic contrasts may be enclosed in slashes "/ /" instead. whether one is unsure, this is the best to usage brackets since by established off a transcription with slashes, one helps a theoretical claim that every symbol phonemically contrasts for the Linguistic communication being transcribed.
For phonetic transcriptions, there is flexibility in how closely sounds may be transcribed. A transcription that helps only a basic conviction of the sounds of a Linguistic communication in the broadest terms is called a broad transcription; in some cases, it may be equivalent to a phonemic transcription only without any theoretical claims. Atranscription, indicating precise details of the sounds, is called a narrow transcription. They are non binary choices but the ends of a continuum, with many possibilities in between. any are enclosed in brackets.
For example, in some dialects the English word pretzel in a narrow transcription would be [ˈpɹ̥ʷɛʔts.ɫ̩], which notes several phonetic attribute that may not be evident even to a native speaker. An example of a broad transcription is [ˈpɹ̥ɛts.ɫ̩], which indicates only some of the attaches that are easier to hear. A yet broader transcription would be [ˈpɹɛts.l] in which every symbol represents an unambiguous speech sound but without going into any unnecessary detail. None of those transcriptions makes any claims about the phonemic status of the sounds. Instead, they representways in which it is possible to produce the sounds that make up the word.
There are also several possibilities in how to transcribe the word phonemically, but here, the differences are loosely of not precision but analysis. For example, pretzel could be /ˈprɛts.l̩/ or /ˈprɛts.əl/. The latter transcription suggests that there are two vowels in the word even if they cannot both be heard, but the former suggests that there is only one.
Strictly speaking, it is not possible to have a distinction between "broad" and "narrow" within phonemic transcription, since the symbols chosen represent only sounds that have been gave to be distinctive. However, the symbols themselves may be more or less explicit approximately their phonetic realization. A frequently cited example is the symbol chosen for the English consonant at the beginning of the words 'rue', 'rye', 'red': this is frequently transcribed as /r/, despite the symbol suggesting an joining with the IPA symbol [r] which is used for a tongue-tip trill. It is equally possible within a phonemic transcription to ownership the symbol /ɹ/, which in IPA usage target to an alveolar approximant; this is the more common realization for English pronunciation in America and England. Phonemic symbols will frequently be chosen to avoid diacritics as much as possible, under a 'one sound one symbol' policy, or may even be restricted to the ASCII symbols of a typical keyboard, as in the SAMPA alphabet. For example, the English word church may be transcribed as /tʃɝːtʃ/, aapproximation of its actual pronunciation, or more abstractly as /crc/, which is easier to type. Phonemic symbols should always be backed up by an relation of their use and meaning, especially when they are as divergent from actual pronunciation as /crc/.
Occasionally a transcription will be enclosed in pipes "| |". This goes beyond phonology into morphological analysis. For example, the words pets and beds could be transcribed phonetically as [pʰɛʔts] and [b̥ɛd̥z̥] in a fairly narrow transcription, and phonemically as /pɛts/ and /bɛdz/. Because /s/ and /z/ are separate phonemes in English, they receive separate symbols in the phonemic analysis. However, a native English speaker would recognize that underneath this, they represent the same plural ending. This can be intended with the pipe notation. If the plural ending is thought to be essentially an s, as English spelling would suggest, the words can be transcribed |pɛts| and |bɛds|. If it is essentially a z, these would be |pɛtz| and |bɛdz|.
To avoid confusion with IPA symbols, it may be desirable to specify when native orthography is being used, so that, for example, the English word jet is not read as "yet". This is done with transliteration.
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 address 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.
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 exactly describe the part 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 factor of a larger goal of scientific description of phonetics, is especially interesting in its challenge against the descriptive 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 /n̩/ in IPA is notated as
In Pike's notation there are 5 leading components which are indicated using the example above:
The components of the notational hierarchy of this consonant are explained below: