seeking advice

[Johanna Nichols]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I think IPA should be used (as it was intended) for phonetic transcription and
things that are to be sounded out, while something more readable should be
used for phonemic transcriptions and the like that are intended to be read.
Most of our own professional publication about reconstruction, sound changes,
etc. uses approximately phonemic transcriptions, and of course discussions of
loan vocabulary, morphological change, etc. almost never require phonetic
transcription; why use phonetic transcription in a textbook just because it
has a standard set of symbols?  (Note that I'm not debating that the plethora
of academic transcriptions needs to be reduced to a single system in a
textbook.  I'm just questioning whether that single system needs to be IPA.)

I'm not sure just what counts as "American phonetic usage", but by "something
more readable" I mean a system that maximizes use of Latin letters and
minimizes special symbols and diacritics.  Also, one that prefers
letter+diacritic combinations to nonletter special symbols and writes
affricates with unit symbols when possible.  I believe it's worldwide common
practice to use "c-hachek", barred lambda, etc. to write affricates.  Another
example of typical practice: if a language has one more or less back, more or
less mid, more or less round vowel,  write "o" and don't try to capture the
phonetic details unless there are two "o"-like vowels or the phonetic details
are at issue. If the language in the next problem set has a similar but lower
vowel, write it "o" too even though the two languages would have different
symbols for their "o" vowels if transcribed in IPA.

Although it's true, as previous replies on this have noted, that we have IPA
fonts and computers now and can print out IPA, our students often don't have
or use IPA fonts.  Typing IPA is extremely slow and complex; why should
students have to go through that in order to type up homeworks?

It's true that in a few years we'll have Unicode everywhere and
40,000,000-character fonts and all, but in the future are we going to have
*more* time to prepare handouts and will our students have *more* time to
prepare homework than now?  I believe today's computer-raised younger
generation reads by eye much better and faster than 15 years ago; they are
accustomed to different values for familiar letters, distinctive spellings for
sheer fun, etc. but not to new symbols instead of letters, and IPA or any
other alphabet switch is a bigger annoyance now than formerly. Readability and
typability are more important than the mere fact of standard symbols.

(Anyway I would argue that common practice in phonemic and more abstract
transcription is about 80-85% standard overall.  So IPA vs. common practice
isn't a matter of standard vs. no standard.)

So I vote for picking something readable and typable and close to common
practice and using it consistently throughout the book, switching to IPA only
if the phonetic detail is really at issue.

Johanna Nichols


>===== Original Message From picard at VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA =====
>"Robert R. Ratcliffe" wrote:
>
>> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>> >  The second recommendation is about the phonetic symbols used, and is
>> > probably subject to even stronger feelings:  some suggest that the
>> > book perhaps should be changed from the IPA symbols used to represent
>> > examples in the first edition to American phonetic usage.  What do you
>> > think?  What is your opinion here?
>>
>> Sorry, maybe I'm a bit of an
>> IPA-fundamentalist. But I've never heard a rational argument against it,
>> just pure academic inertia.
>>
>
>How about sheer volume of usage? Here's a quote from Hitch's review of The
>World's Writing Systems (Daniels & Bright, eds., OUP. 1996) in IJAL 64:
>"The International Phonetic Alphabet . . . is claimed to be 'the main
>phonetic alphabet in use today throughout the world' (p. 821). There
>certainly are no formalized, or officialized, alphabets in greater use, but
>one wonders if the traditional Americanist symbols . . . are not more used
>among linguists who are describing languages" (1998: 289). Note that I have
>no strong feelings one way or another. I only want to suggest that
>arguments in favor of the IPA are not that cut and dried.
>
>Marc Picard

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Professor Johanna Nichols
University of California, Berkeley
Slavic Department #2979
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jbn
http://ingush.berkeley.edu:7012/
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~chechen
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~autotyp/

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