PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION AND ITS TYPES
PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION is a sort of phonetic alphabet, a system of symbols in which every phoneme is supposed to have its own symbol. It helps in learning a foreign language.
It is possible to speak about three types of phonetic transcription.
1. INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION. It was introduced by the International Phonetic Association in 1887. But the science of phonetics has been considerably developed since then. And now the drawbacks of that system are quite evident; it suggests the same symbols for different phonemes: [i: - i], [¢ - ¢], [u:- u], [: - ], which gives the wrong impression that those phonemes differ only in their duration (length).
2. THE PHONEMIC TRANSCRIPTION (broad). In the phonemic transcription every phoneme is given an individual symbol, the number of which is 44 (according to the number of phonemes in British English). It introduces four more symbols: /²/ for /i /; / ¤ / for /u /; // £ / for / o /; /à/ for / è: /.
Words and sentences transcribed with the help of this phonetic script are placed between the slanting brackets. This type of transcription is used in studying English as a speciality.
3. THE ALLOPHONIC TRANSCRIPTION. (narrow). In this type of transcription every allophone has either a special symbol or a diacritical mark. The brackets are also different.
E.g. dark / / - little / l²t /; Aspiration – pit / ph²t /
It is used in doing research work in the field of phonetics.
Note: The elements of the allophonic transcription are used in the phonemic transcription, such as diacritical mark of long and a half long vowels. (i:, u:)
Branches of phonetics
We know that the phonic medium can be studied from four points of view: the articulatory, the acoustic, the auditory, and the functional.
We may consider the branches of phonetics according to these aspects. Articulatory phonetics is the study of the way the vocal organs are used to produce speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds. Auditory phonetics is the study of the way people perceive speech sounds. Of these three branches of phonetics, the longest established, and until recently the most highly developed, is articulatory phonetics. For this reason, most of terms used by linguists to refer to speech-sounds are articulatory in origin.
Phoneticians are also interested in the way in which sound phenomena function in a particular language. In other words, they study the abstract side of the sounds of language. The branch of phonetics concerned with the study of the functional (linguistic) aspect of speech sounds is called phonology. By contrast with phonetics, which studies all possible sounds that the human vocal apparatus can make, phonology studies only those contrasts in sound which make differences of meaning within language.
Besides the four branches of phonetics described above, there are other divisions of the science. We may speak of general phonetics and the phonetics of a particular language (special or descriptive phonetics). General phonetics studies all the sound-producing possibilities of the human speech apparatus and the ways they are used for purpose of communication. The phonetics of a particular language studies the contemporary phonetic system of the particular language, i.e. the system of its pronunciation, and gives a description of all the phonetic units of the language. Descriptive phonetics is based on general phonetics.
Linguists distinguish also historical phonetics whose aim is to trace and establish the successive changes in the phonetic system of a given language (or a language family) at different stages of its development. Historical phonetics is a part of the history of language.
Closely connected with historical phonetics is comparative phonetics whose aims are to study the correlation between the phonetic systems of two or more languages and find out the correspondences between the speech sounds of kindred languages.
Phonetics can also betheoretical and practical. At the faculties of Foreign Languages in this country, two courses are introduced:
1. Practical, or normative, phonetics that studies the substance, the material form of phonetic phenomena in relation to meaning.
2. Theoretical phonetics, which is mainly concerned with the functioning of phonetic units in language.
This dichotomy is that which holds between theoretical and applied linguists. Briefly, theoretical linguistics studies language with a view to constructing theory of its structure and functions and without regard to any practical applications that the investigation of language might have. Appliedlinguistics has as its concerns the application of the concepts and findings of linguistics to a variety of practical tasks, including language teaching.
All the branches of phonetics are closely connected not only with one another but also with other branches of linguistics. This connection is determined by the fact that language is a system whose components are inseparably connected with one another.
Phonetics is also connected with many other sciences. Acoustic phonetics is connected with physics and mathematics. Articulatory phonetics is connected with physiology, anatomy, and anthropology. Historical phonetics is connected with general history of the people whose language is studied; it is also connected with archaeology. Phonology is connected with communication (information) theory, mathematics, and statistics.
The phoneme
Speech sounds are the smallest units of which words are formed. They have no lexical meaning of their own. Their linguistic function begins only they fall into combinations with each other for the formation of words. We distinguish words of the same language by the differences in their sound framing.
Eg. Bed – bad – bid
Those speech sounds, which are capable to distinguish one word of the language from another, are called segmental phonemes.
Every language has a limited number of sound types, which are shared by all the speakers of the language and are linguistically important because they distinguish words in the language. In English there are 20 vowel phonemes and 24 consonant phonemes.
Phoneme is a language unit, not of speech. In actual speech phonemes exist in the form of variants, in other words allophones. Depending on the position in the word and on the influence of neighboring sounds one of the same phoneme may have different varieties, in other words pronounced not quite alike. Allophones (or variants) of a certain phoneme are speech sounds, which are realizations of one and the same phoneme and which, therefore, cannot distinguish words. Their articulatory and acoustic distinctions are conditioned by their position and their phonetic environment. In connected speech sounds are modified. The result: every phoneme displays a vast range of variations. The number of allophones is unlimited. Analyzing them we see that some features of phonemes are constant (relevant) and some are incidental, irrelevant(not phonologically important).