KEY TERMS

1. transcription

2. vowels

3. consonants

4. place and manner of articulation

PREVIEW

This chapter gives an overview of phonetic transcriptions. It:

• gives the important transcriptional symbols

• introduces the two major schemes of phonetic transcriptions

• presents the main articulatory classifications of sounds

• surveys the main variations in phonetic properties exploited by languages

• further develops the relevance of phonetics for the study of phonology

In phonetic transcription, speech is represented by a small set of symbols with a standard interpretation. This chapter looks at the different systems for phonetic transcription. There are two major schemes, the informal American scheme used especially in North America, sometimes known as APA (American Phonetic Alphabet), and the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), promulgated by the International Phonetic Association. The primary difference between these systems is that in certain cases the American scheme uses a regular letter plus a diacritic where IPA tends to use separate special characters. Thus the sound spelled <sh> at the beginning of ship would be transcribed as [š] in the American system, but with the separate letter [∫] in IPA. There are relatively few differences between the two systems, and you should become familiar with both systems (actively with one and passively with the other).