Model for the Format of Bibliography

Brink L, Lund J, Heger S & Jørgensen J (1991). Den storeDanske udtaleordbog. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.

Gimson A C (1962). An introduction to the pronunciationof English. London: Arnold.

Jespersen O (1890). ‘Danias lydskrift.’ In Dania I. 33–79.Jones D (1917). English pronouncing dictionary. London:Dent.

Jones D (1949). The principles of the International Phonet-ic Association: being a description of the InternationalPhonetic Alphabet and the manner of using it, illustratedby texts in 51 languages. London: International PhoneticAssociation.

Jones D (1956). An outline of English phonetics (8th edn.).Cambridge: Heffer. [Appendix A, Types of phonetic tran-scription.].

Kenyon J & Knott T (1944). A pronouncing dictionary ofAmerican English. Springfield, MA: Merriam.

Mangold M (1990). Duden Ausspracheworterbuch. Wor-terbuch der deutschen Standardaussprache (3rd edn.).Mannheim: Dudenverlag.

Nolan F, Esling J et al. (eds.) (1999). Handbook of theInternational Phonetic Association: a guide to the useof the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Ohala M (1999). ‘Hindi.’ In Nolan, Esling et al. (eds.).Okada H (1999). ‘Japanese.’ In Nolan, Esling et al. (eds.).Passy P (1958). Conversations francaises en transcriptionphonetique (2nd edn.). Coustenoble H (ed.). London:University of London Press.

Shimaoka T (2004). Nihongo kara super-native no Eigo e.Tokyo: Kaitakusha.

Smirnitsky A (1975). Essentials of Russian grammar.Moscow: Vysshaya Shkola.

Thelwall R & Sa’adeddin M (1999). ‘Arabic.’ In Nolan,Esling et al. (eds.).

TragerG&SmithH (1951).An outline of English structure.Norman,OK: Battenburg. [2nd edn. (1957).Washington,D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies.]

Ward D (1966). Russian pronunciation illustrated.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wells J (1976). ‘The Association’s alphabet.’ Journal of theInternational Phonetic Association 6(1), 2–3.

Wells J (1990). Longman pronunciation dictionary.Harlow: Longman. [2nd edn. (2000). Harlow: PearsonEducation.]

Wells J (1997). ‘SAMPA computer readable phonetic alpha-bet.’ In Gibbon D, Moore R & Winski R (eds.) Hand-book of standards and resources for spoken languagesystems. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.(Part IV, section B).

Wells J (2003). ‘Phonetic symbols in word processing andon the web.’ In Proceedings of the 15th InternationalCongress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, 3–9 August,2003.

Relevant Websites

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk – University College London,Department of Phonetics and Linguistics website.Resources include information on the Speech AssessmentMethods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA), a machine-readable phonetic alphabet.

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk – University of Glasgow, Facultyof Arts website; links to the International Phonetic Asso-ciation’s phonetic alphabet chart.

Phonetic Transcription: History

A Kemp, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Transcription, in its linguistic sense, has been definedas the process of recording the phonological and/ormorphological elements of a language in terms of aspecific writing system, as distinct from translitera-tion, which is the process of recording the graphicsymbols of one writing system in terms of the corre-sponding graphic symbols of a second writing system.Transcription, in other words, is writing down a lan-guage in a way that does not depend on the priorexistence of a writing system, whereas transliterationdoes.Systems of transcription have existed from the

earliest times. Traditional writing systems of mostlanguages may originally have been transcriptionsof speech, but in the course of time have lost much

of this connection (see ). Spelling reformers have oftensought to restore the connection. Journalists, mission-aries, colonial administrators, teachers, traders, tra-velers, and scholars have all at one time or anotherrequired a precise way of writing down previouslyunwritten languages for various purposes: to improvecommunication, to make available translations of theBible and of noteworthy literary works, to provideeducation, to record folk literature, and so on. Forphoneticians above all, it is essential to have a nota-tion system that allows sounds to be referred to un-ambiguously.

The Segmentation of Speech

Speech in its physical form is a continuum, but tran-scription requires it to be split up into segments,on the basis of some kind of linguistic analysis.Writing systems of the world fall into different groups

396 Phonetic Transcription and Analysis

according to what types of segments they are basedon – words, syllables, or consonants and vowels.Certain features of speech are associated with longersegments than others; for example, stress and intona-tion, which in many writing systems are not marked,are associated with stretches of speech such as thesyllable, word, or sentence.

Types of Transcription

A transcription can never capture all the nuancesof speech. The amount of detail it attempts toinclude in its text will vary according to its purpose.A system intended for the specialist linguist investi-gating a language never previously studied wouldoften need to allow the recording of as many aspossible of the various nuances of sounds, pitch var-iations, voice quality changes, and so on. Such atranscription may be called ‘impressionistic,’ andis unlikely to be helpful to anyone other than aspecialist.Proceeding from this initial transcription, the lin-

guist can deduce the way in which the sound systemof the language is structured, and can replace theimpressionistic transcription with a ‘systematic’ one,which records in its text only the elements that arecrucial for conveying the meanings of the language.This type of transcription may well form the basisfor a regular writing system for that language, and iscalled a ‘phonemic,’ or ‘broad,’ transcription. For usein teaching the spoken language, however, it may behelpful to transcribe some of the subphonemic sounddifferences likely to present problems to the learner.This kind of transcription may be called ‘allophonic,’or ‘narrow.’ If detailed comparisons are to be madebetween this language or dialect and another one,showing the more subtle sound distinctions, the tran-scription may begin to resemble the impressionisticone, but as it is the result of a prior analysis, it willstill be systematic. Conventions may be supplied toshow the way in which the broad transcription isrealized phonetically in certain environments. Forspecial purposes, such as recording the speech ofthe deaf, very complex transcription systems may benecessary, to cope with sound variations that rarelyoccur in the speech of those without such a disability(see later, discussion of the International PhoneticAssociation).

Notation

Transcription systems need to employ a notation thatallows them to refer to a sound unambiguously. Thefollowing approaches utilize some of the principlesfollowed in effective systems of notation:

1. To avoid ambiguity, each symbol used in the nota-tion, in its particular environment, should be re-stricted to one particular sound or sound class(or, in some cases, groups of sounds, such as thesyllable), and each sound, etc. should be repre-sented by only one symbol. So, for instance, thesymbol<j>, which has different values in Germanand English orthography, would need to be con-fined to only one of those values. Conversely,the sound [s], which in English may be conveyedeither by<s> as in ‘supersede’ or<c> as in ‘cede,’must be limited to only one symbol.

2. The symbols used should ideally be simple, butdistinctive in shape, easily legible, easy to writeor print, aesthetically pleasing, and familiar tothe intended users. If printing types are notreadily available, the system will be limited in itsaccessibility and expensive to reproduce.

3. If the transcription is to be pronounceable (not allkinds are required to be), the sound values of thesymbols must be made clear, through a descriptionof the ways in which the sounds are formed,or through recorded examples, or by ‘key words’taken from a language, provided that the accentreferred to is specified. Some transcription systemsinclude pieces of continuous text to illustrate theapplication to particular languages (e.g., thoseof Carl Lepsius and the International PhoneticAssociation (IPA); see later).

4. The symbol system should be expandable,particularly if it is intended to be used to coverall languages. As new languages are encountered,new varieties of sounds will have to be defined.

Alphabetic Notations: Roman and Non-Roman

Alphabetic notations (e.g., the Roman alphabet) arebased on the principle of having one simple symbolto represent each segment. However, many transcrip-tion systems are not based on the Roman alphabet,because of the ambiguous values of some of its sym-bols, or because it has been found preferable to use‘iconic’ symbols, intended to convey by their shapesthe phonetic nature of the sound concerned, and/orto link related groups of sounds. One variety of iconicnotation has been called ‘organic,’ because the shapesof its symbols are meant to suggest the organs ofspeech used to produce them. Shorthand systemscharacteristically are non-Roman and iconic, butnot necessarily organic. Iconic systems have a numberof drawbacks. Apart from the difficulties of readingand printing them, they cannot be easily expandedto incorporate sounds newly encountered. It is alsoless easy to adapt them as and when phonetic theoryundergoes changes.

Phonetic Transcription: History 397

Analphabetic Systems

Analphabetic systems are not based on alphabetic-type segments; instead, the symbols are composedof several elements, some of which resemble chemicalformulas, each element representing one ingredientof the sound concerned (see later).

Supplementing the Roman Alphabet

The number of Roman symbols is far too limitedto convey the sound distinctions needed. There arevarious ways of supplementing the basic alphabet (seeAbercrombie, 1981):

1. Using ‘compound letters’ such as <q> and<x> (equivalent to [k(w)] and [ks], respectively,in English orthography) to stand for other sounds.Thus <x> may be used to represent the Scottishsound represented by the <ch> in ‘loch.’

2. Inverting and/or reversing the letters and givingthem other values, e.g., [O e JM r V] are all phoneticsymbols formed by inverting <c e f m r v>, respec-tively.

3. Adding diacritical marks to basic symbols, as in<a, c, ø>. These diacritics may be attached to theletter or placed somewhere adjacent to it. They arean economical way of enlarging the repertoire,because one mark can be used to change thevalue of a number of symbols; for example, [�]represents nasality and may be added above anyvowel symbol. Conversely, being small, diacriticsmay be inadvertently omitted or obscured, theytend to reduce the legibility of texts, and they canbe expensive to reproduce (though less so since theadvent of computers).

4. Adapting symbols borrowed from other alphabets;examples of symbols taken from Greek by theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, with modifica-tion to blend with the roman font, are [y w b X](see International Phonetic Association). Symbolsmay also be borrowed from another use, such as@), £, $, %, etc.

5. Using digraphs to represent simple sounds, asEnglish orthography does in ‘thing,’wherein<th>and <ng> may represent the simple sounds [y],and [N], respectively. The symbols are easily acces-sible, but problems arise when these sequences areneeded to convey actual sound sequences, such asthe aspirated stop [th].

6. Using different typefaces, such as UPPERCASE,italic, or bold (or even ). However,these are less satisfactory for use in handwriting,they may cause confusion with other conventionaluses, such as emphasis, and they do not blend wellwith other fonts, unless specially adapted.

7. Less commonly, using spatial relationships. Withrespect to a median line, symbols may be placed onthe line, above it, or below it. Braille makes use ofthis in certain of its symbols. For normal printingand writing this is not very satisfactory, as it inter-feres with legibility and can easily lead to errors.

8. Inventing entirely new symbols. Unless new sym-bols are relatively straightforward adaptations ofRoman letters, e.g., inversions or addition of dia-critics, they rarely survive. One that has survived isthe IPA symbol for the velar nasal, [N], probablyfirst used in 1619 by Alexander Gill.

Nonsegmental Aspects of Speech

In any language, English, for example, the position ofthe stress in the word may need to be indicated. Thiscan be done by placing a raised mark before thestressed syllable, for instance, <be"come, "beckon>,or by highlighting the syllable in some way. Extralength can be shown by doubling the segmental sym-bol, as in Italian freddo ‘cold’, or by adding a diacriti-cal mark, as in [a:]. Pitch is an essential feature of thewords of ‘tone languages,’ such as Chinese, Thai, andYoruba, and may be marked by accents over thevowel (e.g., [a]¼ high, [a]¼ low), or by numerals(e.g., the Mandarin Chinese segmental structure[ma] can have four different tones, distinguishingdifferent words: [ma1], [ma2], [ma3], [ma4]). The in-tonation pattern of English may be indicated bymarking the pitch of certain prominent syllables.The first person to try to provide a detailed systemof notation for these features in English was JoshuaSteele (see Steele, Joshua (1700–1791)). Other fea-tures are also sometimes treated as nonsegmental,notably nasality and ‘secondary articulations’ suchas palatalization, velarization, and labialization, be-cause they frequently overlap segmental boundaries.Traditional transcriptions have allocated these fea-tures to segments, adding diacritical marks to thevowel or consonant symbols, but some phonologicalanalyses of speech have associated them with longerstretches by setting up an extra tier for them. The‘prosodic analysis’ of J. R. Firth allocated ‘prosodies’such as nasality and velarity to longer domains,including syllable part, syllable, word, and sentence(see Firthian Phonology). A similar idea lies behindthe ‘autosegmental’ model of phonology.

Historical Survey of

Transcription Systems

Examples of some of the different types of tran-scription systems can be found in the alphabets fromearly times.

398 Phonetic Transcription: History

Roman-Based Alphabetic Systems

(pre-19th Century)

The reform of traditional orthographies (notablythose of French and English, which presented par-ticular problems for learners) led to innovationsin notation. In France, Loys Meigret’s La Trette dela grammere francoeze (1550; see Meigret, Louis(?1500-1558)) included a phonetically based alpha-bet for French. In England, Sir Thomas Smith, in hisDe recta et emendata linguae anglicanae scriptura(On the proper and corrected writing of the Englishlanguage) (Paris, 1568), employed several of thedevices mentioned previously. For example, diacritics([ H]) were used to distinguish the long vowels in‘cheap’ and ‘hate,’ symbolized <e> and <a>, respec-tively; non-Roman alphabets (Greek <V>) were usedfor French and Scottish u (i.e., [y]); and the Irish formof capital <G> was used to represent the first conso-nant in ‘judge.’ A reversed <z> replaced the <sh> of‘ship,’ and for the dental fricatives, Smith used OldEnglish ‘thorn’ and <ð> (see Figure 1).John Hart (see Hart, John (?1501-1574)) was fa-

miliar with Meigret’s system. His book, An orthogra-phie (London, 1569), included special symbols for theconsonant sounds [y ð S tS dZ], beautifully integratedinto the text. He was a keen observer of speech andrecorded the occurrence of syllabic consonants suchas the final <l> in ‘fable,’ which he transcribed as<l%>. Subsequently, William Bullokar (see Bullokar,William (c. 1531–1609)), in his Book at large for theamendment of orthographie for English speech (Lon-don, 1580), provided 40 symbols for transcribingEnglish. By using a font he opened upextra possibilities of rarely used printing sorts. Heillustrated his phonetic alphabet by using it in a num-ber of literary texts, including Aesop’s fables.In Logonomia Anglica (first edition published

in London in 1619), Alexander Gill (1564–1635)introduced a number of extra letters. Like Smith, heused <ð> for the first sound in ‘this,’ and in thesecond edition (1621) of his work he introduced<N> for the velar nasal, thus maintaining the connec-tion with nasal <n>. He transcribed the word ‘high’as <hjh- >, using <j> for the vowel and <h- > for thefinal consonant. This illustrates the use of a diacriticincorporated in a letter. Charles Butler, in his English

grammar (Oxford, 1633), also used a horizontalstroke through certain letters to avoid digraphs,replacing the letter <h>, so that instead of <sh, ph,ch, wh, gh> he had <s, p, c, w, h>, respectively, witha stroke through each letter. He also introducedinverted <t> to represent the <th> in ‘thin.’

John Wilkins (see Wilkins, John (1614–1672)), inhis Essay towards a real character (1668), devisedthree separate systems of notation (see Figure 2).One of these is Roman based and uses digraphs tosupply extra consonant symbols. The letter <h> hasa dual role: it is used both to indicate fricatives, as in<ch, gh, th, dh, sh, zh> (for [x X y ð S Z]), and toindicate voiceless forms of nasals and liquids, so thatvoiced <ng, n, m, 1, r> are paralleled by [voiceless<ngh, nh, mh, lh, rh>. For some of the vowels,Wilkins employed rather poorly designed Greek sym-bols, though this contradicted one of his stated prin-ciples for choosing symbols:

1. They should be the most simple and facil, and yetelegant and comely as to the shape of them.

2. They must be sufficiently distinguished from oneanother.

3. There should be some kind of suitableness, or corre-spondency of the figure to the nature and kind of theletters which they express.

Wilkins’s third condition refers to a nonarbitrary, oriconic, type of notation (for his other notations, seelater, Iconic Alphabets, pre-19th Century).

Figure 1 Symbols devised in 1568 by Sir Thomas Smith, to

represent the final sound made when pronouncing the words

pith, bathe, and dish.

Figure 2 Three non-Roman transcriptions. (A) Iconic represen-

tations of the sounds [l] and [m] (John Wilkins, 1668). (B) Syllabic

transcription of ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ (John Wilkins,

1868). (C) Organic alphabet. Transcription of ‘I remember. I

remember, the roses red and white’ (Henry Sweet, 1906).


In the 18th century, social reformers aiming to re-duce class barriers tried to establish a standard form ofpronunciation; to facilitate the spread of literacy,reformed spelling systems were suggested. ThomasSheridan (see Sheridan, Thomas (1719–1788)) wasone of the first to publish a pronouncing dictionaryof English (1780), which gave a respelling to everyword, and a similar dictionary was published in1791 by John Walker (see Walker, John (1732–1807)). In America, spelling reform led the famousAmerican statesman, scientist, and philosopher, Ben-jamin Franklin, to put forward a new alphabet in1768. It was limited to 26 symbols, of which sixwere newly invented to take the place of the ‘ambigu-ous’ letters <c j q w x y>. Some of these new symbolswere rather too similar to each other in form to besatisfactory, but the printed font was attractivelydesigned; it was published as part of Franklin’s col-lected works (London, 1779) (see Figure 3).William Thornton (1759–1828), a Scottish

American who traveled and lived in many places butwho spent most of his life in the American capital,Washington, also attempted to reform Englishspelling, and in the longer term to make possible thetranscription of unwritten languages. His treatise,entitled Cadmus, or a treatise on the elements ofwritten language (1793), won the Magellanic goldmedal of the American Philosophical Society. Thenotation he used was Roman based and introducedsome well-designed additional letters, including<M>

to replace <w>, <&> to represent the first consonantin ‘ship,’ and a circle with a dot in the center (8,a Gothic symbol) to represent <wh> in ‘when.’ Heaimed to economize by using inverted basic symbolswhere possible, e.g., <m, M>, <n, u>, <J, &>. Someyears later, Thornton used his alphabet to transcribe288 words in the Miami Indian language. Amongadmirers of his system were Thomas Jefferson,Alexander von Humboldt, and Count Volney (seelater, Volney and the Volney Prize).The increasing involvement of Europeans with the

languages of Asia, Africa, and America, whether astraders, missionaries, travelers, or colonial adminis-trators, emphasized the need for a standard, universalalphabet. One of the first to try to provide a translit-eration for Asian languages was the brilliant Englishoriental scholar and linguist Sir William Jones

(see Jones, William, Sir (1746–1794)). He was a high-ly skilled phonetician, and during his time as a highcourt judge in India (1783–1794) saw the need for aconsistent way of transcribing languages. His systemwas presented in Dissertation on the orthography ofAsiatick words in Roman letters (1788). He thoughtit unnecessary to provide any detailed account of thespeech organs, but gave a short description of thearticulations. An ideal solution, he believed, wouldbe to have ‘‘a natural character for all articulatesounds . . . by delineating the several organs of speechin the act of articulation’’ (i.e., an ‘organic’ alphabet),but for oriental languages he preferred a translitera-tion. This was partly because of the difficulty ofconveying the precise nature of sounds to the nonspe-cialist, but also because he wished to preserve theorthographical structure, so that the ‘grammaticalanalogy’ would not be lost, and there would be nodanger of representing ‘‘a provincial and inelegantpronunciation.’’ The system was not intended as auniversal alphabet; his notation was confined to theletters of the Roman alphabet, supplemented bydigraphs and a few diacritics. He chose the vowelsymbols on the basis of the values they have in theItalian language, rather than those of English, unlikesome other schemes used in India at the time. Hisalphabet had an influence on nearly all subsequentideas for the transliteration of oriental languages, atleast for the following century. The romanization ofthese languages became a major concern of mission-aries, administrators, educationists, and travelers,though some scholars, and literate members of thecommunities concerned, were less enthusiastic, be-lieving that something culturally vital would be lostif the native scripts were changed into a different form.

Iconic Alphabets (pre-19th Century)

Two of John Wilkins’s systems of notation were icon-ic. The more elaborate one, which was not intendedto be used to transcribe connected speech, consistedof small diagrams of the head and neck, cut away toshow the articulatory formation of each sound. Nextto each diagram was a simplified symbol relating tothe way the sound was formed (see Figure 2A). Thesecond notation assigned each consonant a symbol,which took various forms: straight line, T shape,L shape, or various curve shapes. To this basic shape

Figure 3 Excerpt illustrating the extended alphabet devised by Benjamin Franklin in 1768 (published in Franklin’s collected works

in 1779).


Wilkins added a small circle or hook, at the top,middle, or base, to represent one of six vowels. Thusthe composite symbol represented a syllable, eithervowel þ consonant or consonant þ vowel. Each cat-egory of sound, such as oral stop consonant, fricative,or nasal, had a characteristic shape, as did voicelessand voiced sounds at the same place of articulation.The system was ingenious, but the symbols couldeasily be confused, and it is unlikely that anyoneother than Wilkins actually used it (see Figure 2B).Wilkins’s contemporary, Francis Lodwick (see

Lodwick, Francis (1619–1694)), published a similarsystem in 1686 under the title An essay towards anuniversal alphabet. He stated in his text the importantprinciple that ‘‘no one character should have morethan one sound, nor any one sound be expressed bymore than one character.’’ The notation was a sylla-bary, using shapes designed to show similarities be-tween the sounds symbolized, which are set out in atable with six places of articulation: bilabial, dental,palatal, velar, labiodental, and alveolar. The top sym-bol in each column is the voiced stop, and the lowerones are formed by progressive modifications of it. Aswith Wilkins’s system, the vowels are added to theconsonant symbols as diacritics.Another iconic alphabet is to be found in chapter 5

of the Traite de la formation mechanique des langues,published in 1765 by the French scholar and magis-trate, Charles de Brosses (see Brosses, Charles de(1709–1777)). The work was intended for scholarsresearching into languages, rather than for everydayuse. Brosses called it ‘organic and universal.’ It isbased on a somewhat idiosyncratic analysis of speechproduction, which, among other things, assumed thatthe vowels were sounded at different points on acorde, or string, equivalent to the vocal tract tube.Brosses’s understanding of speech production is sus-pect in a number of ways; for example, he classes<s> as a nasal consonant. His first attempt at nota-tion was complex, using symbols that pictured theoutline of the different vocal organs (lips, teeth, pal-ate, nose, etc.), but he simplified this subsequently,using symbols made up of curves and straight linesat different angles. The vowel symbols were attachedto the consonants to give a syllabic sign, and thenotation included composite symbols to representconsonant clusters.

Nineteenth-Century Transcription

Systems

Volney and the Volney Prize

The French orientalist, statesman, and reformer,Count Constantin Francois Volney (see Volney,

Constantin-Francois Chasseboeuf, Comte de(1757–1820)), had been concerned for many yearsabout the difficulties experienced by Europeans inlearning oriental languages, and the poor standardof the teaching of these languages. His book, Simpli-fication des langues orientales (Paris, 1795), put for-ward a system for transliterating Arabic, Persian, andTurkish into Roman script, supplemented by a fewGreek letters and some newly invented symbols. Dur-ing a visit to America from 1795 to 1798, he stayedwith William Thornton, and while there becameacquainted with Sir William Jones’s alphabet. Heconceived the idea of a universal alphabet, not forscholarly purposes, but to act as a practical tool fortravelers, traders, etc. His 1795 system was used withmodifications for geographical names on the map ofEgypt compiled in 1803 by the French government,but his later L’Alphabet europeen applique aux lan-gues asiatiques (Paris, 1819) provided a fuller systemof 60 symbols, mostly Roman, replacing some of hisprevious, newly invented, symbols with more familiarletters modified by diacritics. However, Volney rea-lized that further research was needed, and his finalgesture was to leave 24 000 francs in his will, for aprize to be awarded by the Institut de France toanyone who could devise a suitable ‘harmonic alpha-bet’ (to bring harmony out the existing confusion ofpractices) in Roman script (see Kemp, 1999).

The Volney Prize for the first year (1822) was to befor an essay setting out the necessary conditions forsuch an alphabet. The prizewinners were both Ger-man librarians: Josef Scherer (d. 1829) argued thatwhat was needed was a transcription reflecting pro-nunciation, rather than a transliteration, whereasA. A. E. Schleiermacher (1787–1858), the co-winner,favored a transliteration, for very much the samereasons as those given by Sir William Jones. Schererand Schleiermacher submitted detailed transcriptionsystems for the 1823 prize, which was won byScherer; Schleiermacher’s essay was submitted laterin a revised form and was published in 1835. Hecontinued to work on his system, and his completedscheme, Das harmonische oder allgemeine Alphabetzur Transcription fremder Schriftsysteme in latei-nische Schrift (The harmonic or general alphabet forthe transcription of foreign writing systems into Latinscript), was eventually published in Darmstadt, afterhis death (1864). Together with his new alphabet, thiswork contained examples of the non-Roman scriptsof 10 languages. In all, 275 new characters had to becast. His notation excluded digraphs and letters fromother alphabets, which he felt would be typographi-cally unsuitable, so his main resource was diacritics,both above and below the basic symbols. Someof these were used systematically (e.g., to indicate


nasality, aspiration, or palatalization), but he admit-ted that problems of legibility and combinability hadoften made total consistency impossible. The alpha-bet was never adopted for wider use (see Figure 4).Further essays on transcription were submitted forthe Volney Prize over the next 20 years, but the com-mission set up to administer the prize deemed none ofthe essays to have the ‘final answer’ to the problem.

Shorthand and Spelling Reform

In the 19th century, the most prominent spelling re-former was Sir Isaac Pitman (see Pitman, Isaac, Sir(1813–1897)). Pitman was of comparatively humbleorigin, and determined from his early years to furthersocial reform and improve the educational system bydeveloping new alphabets to make spelling easier. Hisfirst contribution was to develop a system of short-hand (now world famous), which he published in1837 as Phonography; this work explored the waysin which notation systems can be made to act effi-ciently in conveying language. Unlike earlier systems,it was based not on English spelling but on the Englishsound system.By 1842, Pitman had devised several possible pho-

netic alphabets, but they still contained elements ofhis shorthand. In the following year, he came downfirmly in favor of using the letters of the Romanalphabet as a basis, and the same year saw the begin-ning of his connection and cooperationwithAlexanderJ. Ellis (see Ellis, Alexander John (ne Sharpe) (1814–1890)). Ellis and Pitmanwere from very different back-grounds; Ellis had a first in mathematics from Cam-bridge and a private fortune. He had developed aninterest in phonetic notation partly through hisattempts to write down dialects he encountered inhis travels abroad, but it was only after exposure to

Pitman’s work that Ellis began to study phoneticsseriously. Over the next few years, Pitman’s untiringenthusiasm in publicizing the new ideas, and Ellis’sknowledge of languages and assiduous research intothe background of phonetics and notation systems,resulted in the English phonotypic alphabet of 1847(see Kelly, 1981). Many of the symbols used were laterto form the basis of the alphabet of the InternationalPhonetic Association. The proposed reform of Englishspelling never materialized, but Ellis’s subsequentwork on phonetic notation undoubtedly owed muchto these early years of collaboration with Pitman.

In America also, proposals for spelling reformcontinued to appear. In 1858, the president of thePhonetic Society of Great Britain, SirWalter Trevelyan,proposed a prize for an essay on a reform in thespelling of the English language, which should containan analysis of sounds and an alphabetic notation con-taining as few new types as possible. The prizewinningessay, entitled Analytic orthography (Philadelphia,1860), was by Samuel Haldeman (1812–1880),professor of Zoology and Natural History at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, and later professor of Com-parative Philology at the same university. Haldemanhad a strong linguistic background, notably in NativeAmerican languages, andwas a good phonetic observ-er, fully familiar with the work of Sir William Jonesand with his contemporaries Lepsius (see Lepsius,Carl Richard (1810–1884)), Ellis, Pitman, MelvilleBell (see Bell, Alexander Melville (1819–1905)), andMax Muller (see Muller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900)).Haldeman’s notationwas based on theRomanalphabet, and the letters used were restricted to thevalues they had in Latin.He used some diacritics and afew new letters, including some ‘broken’ letters – thatis, Roman formswith part of their strokesmissing, not

Figure 4 Consonant symbols devised by A. A. E. Schleiermacher, as part of his transcription system, originally submitted in 1823 for

the Volney Prize; the revised form was published in 1835.


a satisfactory device. He also attempted to symbolizedurational differences by introducing characters ofdifferent widths. However, his system had no bettersuccess than did others of the time.

Languages of America and Africa

In the early 19th century, most of the languagesof Africa and the indigenous languages of Americahad no writing systems. Pierre Duponceau (seeDuponceau, Pierre Etienne (1760–1844)), a Frenchemigre to the United States, won the Volney Prize in1838 with his Memoire sur le systeme grammaticaldes langues de quelques nations indiennes de l’Amer-ique du Nord, and had shown in an earlier article(‘English phonology,’ 1817) a thorough understand-ing of the principles of a universal alphabet, thoughhe never produced one himself. Under his influence,John Pickering (1777–1846), like Duponceau a law-yer by training, was led to publish his Essay on auniform orthography for the Indian languages ofNorth America (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1818).Pickering, like Sir William Jones, whose work headmired, used a Roman alphabet supplemented bydigraphs and some diacritics, preferring small super-script letters or subscript numerals to dots or hooks,which he felt might accidentally be omitted. Thissystem was designed specifically for Native Americanlanguages, not as a universal alphabet.Many of the missionary societies were concerned

at this time to establish a standard transcription sys-tem. The Church Missionary Society produced apamphlet in 1848 entitled Rules for reducing unwrit-ten languages to alphabetical writing in Roman char-acters: with reference especially to the languagesspoken in Africa. The rules allowed some flexibilityin deciding how detailed the transcription should be,according to its intended use. The notation suggestedwas Roman based, with a few diacritics and somedigraphs. Lewis Grout produced a Roman-based sys-tem for Zulu in 1853, on behalf of the AmericanMission in Port Natal, using the symbols <c, q, x>for the clicks.

Carl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884)

In 1852, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) invit-ed the distinguished German Egyptologist Lepsius toadapt an alphabet that he had devised earlier, to suitthe needs of the Society. Lepsius had been interestedin writing systems for many years. In 1853, he wonthe agreement of the Royal Academy of Berlin to fundthe cutting and casting of type letters for a new alpha-bet, to be used as a basis for recording languages withno writing system. In the following year, an Alpha-betical Conference was convened in London, on theinitiative of the Prussian ambassador in London, Carl

Bunsen, who, as a scholar with an interest in philolo-gy, wished to explore the possibility of an agreedsystem for representing all languages in writing. Theconference was attended by representatives from theCMS, the Baptist Missionary Society, the WesleyanMissionary Society, and the Asiatic and EthnologicalSocieties, and a number of distinguished scholars,including Lepsius and Friedrich Max Muller. In spiteof their well-known involvement in the transcriptionproblem, neither Isaac Pitman nor A. J. Ellis wasamong those included. Four resolutions were passed:(1) the new alphabet must have a physiological basis,(2) it must be limited to the ‘typical’ sounds employedin human speech, (3) the notation must be rationaland consistent and suited to reading and printing andalso it should be Roman based, supplemented byvarious additions, and (4) the resulting alphabetmust form a standard ‘‘to which any other alphabet isto be referred and from which the distance of eachis to be measured.’’

Lepsius and Max Muller both submitted alphabetsfor consideration; Muller’s Missionary alphabet,which used italic type mixed with roman type, wasnot favored, and Lepsius’s extensive use of diacriticshad obvious disadvantages for legibility and the avail-ability of types. The conference put off a decision,but later in 1854, the CMS gave its full support toLepsius’s alphabet. A German version of the alphabetappeared in 1854 (Das allgemeine linguistische Al-phabet), followed in 1855 by the first English edition,entitled Standard alphabet for reducing unwrittenlanguages and foreign graphic systems to a uni-form orthography in European letters. The Lepsiusalphabet had some success in the first few years, butLepsius was pressed by the CMS to produce a newenlarged edition, which appeared in English in 1863(printed in Germany, like the first edition, becausethe types were only available there; see Figure 5).The most obvious difference from the first editionwas that the collection of alphabets, illustrating theapplication of Lepsius’s standard alphabet to differ-ent languages, had been expanded from 19 pages and

Figure 5 Symbols of the standard alphabet devised by Lepsius

in 1863.


54 languages to 222 pages and 117 languages (seeLepsius, 1863).There was as yet no phoneme theory, but Lepsius

was well aware that no alphabet could or should tryto convey all of the subtle nuances of speech. Hispractical aim was to make an intelligible and usablesystem available to nonspecialists, hence the expan-sion of the collection of alphabets and the avoidanceof a technical description of the physiology of speech.However, Lepsius relied almost entirely on the use ofdiacritics to supplement the basic Roman symbols.They were used in a consistent way for the mostpart, and Lepsius foresaw situations in which itwould not be necessary to use all of the distinctionsprovided for, namely, when, in modern terms, a‘broad’ transcription would be sufficient. Neverthe-less, the profusion of diacritics meant that the print-ing types were less accessible, and the symbols wereless legible and more subject to errors in reproduc-tion. Ellis calculated that on the basis of 31 diacriticalmarks (17 superscripts and 14 subscripts), Lepsius’salphabet had at least 286 characters, of which at least200 would have to be cut for every font used.The alphabet attained a limited success in Africa;

the distinguished Africanist Carl Meinhof (seeMeinhof, Carl Friedrich Michael (1857–1944)) andhis missionary friend Karl Endemann (1836–1919)gave it their support by using it, with some modifica-tions, in their works on African languages (see Heepe,1983), and themissionary P.Wilhelm Schmidt adoptedit as a basis for his ‘Anthropos alphabet’ (see later).However, in spite of Lepsius’s high international repu-tation, the support of the Berlin Academy, and theresources of the CMS, the alphabet failed to find anestablished place.

A. J. Ellis’s Later Alphabets

Ellis’s Universal writing and printing with ordinaryletters (Edinburgh, 1856) contained his ‘Digraphic’and ‘Latinic’ alphabets, with examples, hints on prac-tical use, and comparisons with the systems ofLepsius and Max Muller, together with suggestionsfor a future ‘Panethnic’ alphabet. The digraphic al-phabet, as its name suggests, supplemented theRoman alphabet with digraphs or trigraphs, such as<kh> for [x], <ng> for [N], and <ngj> for [ J], withthe idea of making its notation accessible to as wide agroup of people as possible. It was intended for use inany language, and Ellis supplied an abbreviated formof it for use when detailed precision of descriptionwas not necessary. The Latinic alphabet was intendedfor those wishing ‘‘to avoid the cumbersomeness ofthe Digraphic alphabet,’’ which it did, by employingsmall capitals and turned letters; for example, [x] isrendered by <K> and [N] is rendered by <N>.

Probably Ellis’s most well-known alphabet isPalaeotype (so-called because it used the ‘old types,’without diacritics or non-Roman symbols, and withrelatively few turned letters). Palaeotype was for sci-entific, not popular, use, and Ellis employed it inhis monumental work On early English pronuncia-tion (EEP) (1869–1889). There were about 250 sepa-rate symbols, the greatest number being digraphs ortrigraphs, but with some italics, small capitals, and(very few) turned letters. Certain letters were used asdiacritical signs – for instance <j> is used to indicatepalatality, as in <lj> for [L]. There were also non-alphabetic signs for features such as ingressive air-streams, tones, and stress. Ellis provided a reducedform of his alphabet, known as ‘ApproximativePalaeotype,’ which contained about 46 separate sym-bols. The full alphabet was, he believed, ‘‘in all prob-ability the most complete scheme which has yet beenpublished,’’ but he foresaw the need to supplementit to accommodate sounds from languages not yetphonetically studied.

In the third volume of EEP (1871), Ellis publishedthe ‘Glossic’ alphabet, a simplified form of transcrip-tion for English, based on symbols used in normalEnglish orthography. He intended it as a new systemof spelling, to be used concurrently with the existingEnglish orthography. In answer to objections that itwould be too sweeping a change, Ellis produced arevised form in 1880 called ‘Dimid-iun,’ but thisreceived even less support. None of these alphabetswas destined to have any lasting success, but in theprocess of devising them Ellis laid a foundation for thedevelopment of phonetics as a discipline in Britain,and more particularly for the study and recording ofEnglish dialects.

Germany: Physiology and New Alphabets

In Germany, several schemes for a new alphabet wereproposed by scholars who approached phoneticsfrom a physiological rather than a linguistic angle.Karl Rapp (1803–1883), in Versuch einer Physiologieder Sprache (1836), used a Roman alphabet, supple-mented by some letters taken from the Old Englishand Greek alphabets and a few diacritics. Ellis,writing in the 1840s, frequently paid tribute to Rapp’swork. Ernst Brucke (see Brucke, Ernst (1819–1891)),in his Grundzuge der Physiologie (1856), also putforward a Roman-based alphabet, supplemented bysome Greek letters and by superscript numerals usedas diacritics. For example, <tl> represented alveolar[t], <t2> represented retroflex [<], and so on. Bruckelater (Uber eine neue Methode der phonetischenTransscription, 1863) developed an iconic non-Roman alphabet, in which the consonant symbolswere based on articulations but the vowel symbols


were based on acoustic resonances. The consonantsymbols occupy one or more of three verticallyaligned areas and are made up of two basic parts,one showing place of articulation and the other man-ner of articulation. A further part is particularly in-teresting in its attempt to indicate states of the glottisother than ‘vibrating’ – open, narrowed, closed,creaky, and what Brucke called ‘hard resonance’ and‘soft resonance.’ The vowels occupy only the middleof the three areas, so that they stand out clearly.Diacritics are provided to indicate accent, duration,and types of juncture. Carl Merkel (1812–1876)also devised a non-Roman alphabet (Anatomie undPhysiologie des menschlichen Stimm-und Sprachor-gans, 1857; revised edition, 1866), but, like Brucke’salphabet, it is extremely difficult to read, and neithersystem attained any success. Both Brucke and Merkelwere familiar with only a small range of languagesand were concerned primarily to show the total capa-cities of the human vocal organs in the production ofsounds.Moritz Thausing (1838–1884), in Das natiirliche

Lautsystem der menschlichen Sprache (1863), basedhis system on aNaturlaut ‘natural sound’ representedby the vowel <a>, and 21 other sounds, which di-verged from <a> in three different directions (sevenon each path), like a three-sided pyramid. His nota-tion used a musical staff of four lines and threespaces, thus accommodating the seven grades ofsounds as notes on the staff. Each of the three setsof seven had a special note shape to distinguish it.Intermediate sounds were shown by modifiers.Thausing believed this was preferable to Brucke’sscheme in that the symbols were not iconic, and socould be used for sounds for which formation was notfully understood.Felix Du Bois Reymond (1782–1865) was stimu-

lated by the schemes put forward by Brucke andLepsius to complete a scheme of his own (Kadmus,1862), which he had sketched out earlier. It wasRoman based, but, unusually, attempted to combinethis with an iconic approach. So, for instance, all thevoiceless consonants had symbols that extend belowthe ‘middle area’ (mittlere Bahn), unlike the voicedones: <p> and <b> already conform to this princi-ple, and to continue it, Reymond proposed, for exam-ple, that the symbol <q> should replace <t> as thevoiceless equivalent of<d>. Like Brucke, he confinedthe vowel symbols to the ‘middle area.’ In spite of agood phonetic basis outlined in his book, the schemefailed to become established.

Bell’s Visible Speech

Alexander Melville Bell was the son of an elocutionteacher, and in due course became his father’s

principal assistant. Between the years 1843 and1870, he lectured in the universities of Edinburghand London, after which he emigrated to Canadaand continued his teaching there. In 1864, he gavepublic demonstrations of his new scheme for record-ing speech in writing, and in 1867 the system waspublished under the title Visible speech, the science ofuniversal alphabetics. It was not (at least avowedly)intended to be a new spelling system, but rather toassist children in learning to read, and to provide ‘‘asound bridge from language to language.’’ Bell wasunsuccessful in attempts to persuade the British gov-ernment to give him funds to support the system, butcontinued to use it for his own purpose in teaching,and claimed that it was ‘‘perfect for all its purposes.’’The symbols he used were iconic, intended to signifythe vocal organs involved in the production of thesound concerned. For instance, the open vocal cordsare shown by <O>, which represents [h]. The conso-nant symbols are based on a sagittal diagram of thehead facing right. The shape < > represents a con-tinuant (shown by the fact that there is a gap to theright) with a constriction at the back (i.e., [x]), where-as < > represents a constriction at the front of thevocal tract, namely [y]. The same symbol with the gapfacing upward represents dental [y], and with thegap facing downward, palatal [c]. The remainingconsonant symbols have similar iconic relationships,with modifiers to show complete closure (a bar acrossthe gap), nasality (a different bar), voicing, etc. Thevowel symbols are based on a vertical line, withhooks at the top (close vowels), bottom (openvowels), or both (mid vowels), facing left for backvowels, right for front vowels, and in both directionsfor the so-called ‘mixed’ or central vowels. Roundingis shown by a horizontal bar through the middle.

Ellis, writing just before the full publication ofVisible speech, admitted that his Palaeotype was‘‘far less complete’’ than Bell’s scheme. ‘‘However,that alphabet,’’ he said, ‘‘requires new types, whichis always an inconvenience, though I believe that anentirely new system of letters, such as that of Mr. Bell,is indispensable for a complete solution of the prob-lem.’’ He pointed out also that many potential users‘‘are ill-qualified, without special training, to use avery refined instrument.’’ Iconic notations are certain-ly subject to the criticism that they may not be able toaccommodate new sounds or new descriptive frame-works, and can never convey the exact nature of thesound symbolized. Bell’s symbols were much betterin design than most alphabets of this kind are, buthe faced the immense task of persuading people toadopt a system that looked very different from whatthey were used to seeing. The alphabet failed to findsupporters outside the circle of his pupils.


Sweet’s Romic and Organic Alphabets

Henry Sweet (see Sweet, Henry (1845–1912)), per-haps the greatest of 19th-century phoneticians, stud-ied under Bell, and hisHandbook of phonetics (1877)was intended to be an exposition and development ofBell’s work, but in this book he used a Roman-basednotation (influenced by Ellis’s Palaeotype), which hecalled ‘romic,’ distinguishing two varieties of it. ‘Broadromic,’ his ‘practical’ notation, intended to record only‘fundamental distinctions,’ corresponding to distinc-tions of meaning (i.e., phonemes, in modern terms),was confined to symbols with their original Romanvalues supplemented by digraphs and turned letters.‘Narrow romic’ was to be a ‘scientific’ notation andprovided extra symbols, notably for the vowels, forwhich Sweet used italics, diacritic <h>, and, further,turned letters. However, in 1880, he took over Bell’snotation, which he regarded as ‘‘an improvement onany possible modification of the Roman alphabet’’ forscientific purposes. He modified it and added somesymbols, to form an ‘organic alphabet,’ which he usedin his Primer of phonetics (1890) and in some otherworks (see Figure 2). At this stage, Sweet felt that, evenfor more practical purposes, the necessity to supple-ment the Roman alphabet with other devices (in par-ticular, diacritics and new letters, which he stronglyopposed) made it cumbersome and inefficient. Towardthe end of his life, however, he emphasized that unifor-mity in notation was not necessarily a desirable thing‘‘while the foundations of phonetics are still underdiscussion,’’ and accepted that the unfamiliarity of or-ganic types might be too formidable an obstacle toovercome. He continued to use his romic alphabet asan alternative to the organic one, and broad romicformed the basis for the new alphabet of the Interna-tional Phonetic Association (see later). Sweet’s organicalphabet did not enjoy a long life, nor indeed did theidea of iconic alphabets, even though Daniel Jones andPaul Passy (see Passy, Paul Edouard (1859–1940))thought it worthwhile to propose another such schemein Le maıtre phonetique (1907).

Analphabetic Schemes

‘Analphabetic’ notations use symbols that representthe subcomponents of a segment, rather like chemicalformulas. One early example of such a scheme wasproposed by the Dutch writer Lambert ten Kate (seeKate Hermansz, Lambert ten (1674–1731)) in 1723,and another by Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Eras-mus Darwin, in 1803. Thomas Wright Hill (1763–1851), a schoolmaster in Birminghamwho had a keenear, though his knowledge of sounds was self-taught,devised a notation in which each place of articulationwas allotted a number. The interaction of active and

passive articulators was expressed in terms of numer-ator (passive) and denominator (active); for example,a bilabial articulation is 1 (upper lip) over 1 (lowerlip), a labiodental is 2 (upper teeth) over 1, a dental is2 over 3 (tongue tip), and so on. The degree of stric-ture and state of the glottis were shown by the shapeof the line between the numbers, and vowels wereindicated by the use of double lines instead of a singleone. It is easier, however, to typeset symbols that are inhorizontal sequence. Otto Jespersen (see Jespersen,Otto (1860–1943)) included his analphabetic (latercalled antalphabetic) alphabet in The articulations ofspeech sounds (1889). It used a combination ofRoman letters, Greek letters, numerals, italics, heavytype, and subscript and superscript letters. The Greekletters represented the active articulators involved –lower lip (a), tongue tip (b), tongue body (g), velumand uvula (d), vocal cords (E), and respiratory organs(z). The numerals following the Greek letter showedthe relative stricture taken up by the articulators andthe Roman letters referred to the passive articulators.For example, the combination b1fed0E3 would repre-sent one kind of [s] (b¼ tongue tip, 1¼ close stricture,fe¼ in the area of alveolar ridge/hard palate,d0¼ velic closure, E3¼ open vocal cords). It was notintended for use in a continuous transcription (thoughJespersen showed how this is possible in a matrixform), but served as a descriptive label for the segmentconcerned (cf. modern feature notations).

Friedrich Techmer had proposed an analphabeticscheme in his Phonetik (1880). It employed five hori-zontal lines that, together with the spaces in betweenthem, showed the major places of articulation.Musical-type notes were then inserted to show themanners of articulation. It was designed essentiallyas a scientific notation for Techmer’s own use andnever achieved widespread adoption. His Roman-based alternative, published in the InternationaleZeitschrift fur allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (in1884 and in 1888), was a highly detailed and system-atic scheme, making use of a basic italic typeface,both uppercase and lowercase, with various diacriticseither directly beneath or to the right of the mainsymbol. Johan Storm (see Storm, Johan (1836–1920)) judged it to be the best of the German systemsof notation, and it was the basis for Setala’s 1901transcription for Finno-Ugric languages (see Lazic-zius, 1966).

Kenneth Pike (see Pike, Kenneth Lee (1912–2000)),in his classic book Phonetics (1943), outlined an evenmore detailed analphabetic notation, called ‘func-tional analphabetic symbolism.’ It was composed ofroman and italic letters in uppercase and lowercase,and was intended to illustrate the complexity ofsound formation and to expose the many assumptions


that lie behind the customary short labels used torefer to sounds. The segment [t] is represented bythe notation MaIlDeCVveIcAPpaat dtltnransfsSiFSs;the italic symbols give the broad headings of themechanisms involved and the roman letters give sub-classifications. Even this degree of complexity, Pikesays, is ‘‘suggestive but by no means exhaustive.’’

Dialect Alphabets

Various special alphabets have been created forthe transcription of particular dialects (see furtherin Heepe (1983)). J. A. Lundell was commissionedwhile a student at Uppsala to produce an alphabet forSwedish. The resulting Swedish dialect alphabet wasfirst published in 1879 and has been widely used sincethen, not only for Swedish. The basic font is italic,which Lundell thought most suitable for cursivewriting as well as for printing, and he supplementedthe letters of the Roman alphabet almost entirelyby employing new letter shapes, mostly formed byadding loops or hooks to the basic symbols. Theyretain some iconic character through a consistentuse of a particular hook, etc. for one place of articu-lation. Lundell rejected the use of different fontsand of capital letters to make distinctions, and alsoavoided unattached diacritics, except those for supra-segmental features. Sweet was critical of Lundell’sscheme, mainly on the grounds of the complex lettershapes and the consequent expense of casting themany new types required, but Storm, in correspon-dence with Sweet, expressed a much higher opinionof it, particularly the systematic character of the lettershapes used for consonants. Some of the vowel sym-bols are easily confused and would require extremecare in handwritten texts.Jespersen produced a dialect alphabet for Danish,

first published in the periodical Dania in 1890, andlater used in the Danish pronouncing dictionary. Itfollows the ‘broad’ principle, employing phoneticsymbols without diacritics to represent the Danishsounds. Its reversal of the values assigned to <a>and <A> in the IPA alphabet is a source of possibleconfusion.

The Alphabet of the International Phonetic

Association

L’Association Phonetique Internationale, founded in1897, grew out of two previous organizations: ThePhonetic Teachers’ Association, founded in Paris in1886, and L’Association Phonetique des Professeursde Langues Vivantes, which replaced it in 1889. Thefirst version of the IPA alphabet, based on Pitman’salphabet of 1847 (as revised in 1876) and on Sweet’sbroad romic, appeared in 1888. From the beginn-ing, the emphasis was on practical use for language

teaching. Consequently, the symbols were chosenwith a view to clarity, familiarity, and economy. Thepublished IPA principles stipulated that ‘‘there shouldbe a separate sign for each distinctive sound; that isfor each sound which, being used instead of anotherin the language, can change the meaning of a word’’(i.e., for each phoneme). The symbols were to beletters of the Roman alphabet as far as possible,with values determined by international usage, andwhen ‘‘very similar shades of sound’’were to be foundin several languages, the same sign was to be used.The use of diacritics was to be avoided, except forrepresenting ‘‘shades of varieties of the typicalsounds,’’ because of the problem they presented forreading and writing. It was also stipulated that, whenpossible, the shape of new symbols should ‘‘be sug-gestive of the sound they represent, by their resem-blance to the old ones.’’ For example, the basic <n>shape was retained for the palatal, retroflex, velar,and uvular nasals [ J, 0, N, N].

Over the years, the alphabet has been modified foruse as a general phonetic resource, to make detailedphonetic transcriptions and comparisons of languagesounds. Diacritics have been accepted as admissiblefor certain limited purposes. A thorough reappraisalof it has been made (much of it reflected in articles inthe Journal of the International Phonetic Association(1986–1989)). Since the Kiel Convention in 1989,additions and amendments have been made to thesymbols and to their presentation in chart form (seeFigure 6).

The IPA principles have been amended in certainrespects, notably to make it clear that IPA symbolsshould not be seen simply as representations ofsounds, but as ‘‘shorthand ways of designating certainintersections of . . . a set of phonetic categories whichdescribe how each sound is made.’’However, it is stillstated that ‘‘the sounds that are represented by thesymbols are primarily those that serve to distinguishone word from another in a language.’’ Two impor-tant developments, as a result of working groups setup following the Kiel Convention, are a completecomputer coding of IPA symbols and an extensionof the IPA alphabet to include disordered speechand voice quality (see MacMahon, 1986; Albright,1958; International Phonetic Association, 1999:Appendices 2 and 3).

Twentieth-Century and Later

Developments

The ‘Anthropos Alphabet’ of P. W. Schmidt

The alphabet of P. W. Schmidt was first publishedin the periodical Anthropos in 1907, and was revised



in 1924. Schmidt kept most of Lepsius’s symbols,adding some diacritics to distinguish sounds leftundifferentiated by Lepsius, but introduced the IPAsymbols <æ>, <œ> (and turned versions of them)and <M>, mostly to replace symbols with diacritics.For the consonants, to give some examples, < > and<z

P> are used for the dental fricatives instead of

Lepsius’s <y> and <d>, and in Schmidt’s revisededition the inverted forms of <t>, <c>, and <k>replaced Lepsius’s click symbols</>,<//>, and<!>.Interestingly, the 1989 revision of the IPA alphabetadopted Lepsius’s click symbols (slightly modified).

Native American Languages

In 1916, the Smithsonian Institution published apamphlet entitled Phonetic transcription of Indianlanguages, embodying the report of the committeeof the American Anthropological Association, con-sisting of Franz Boas (see Boas, Franz (1858–1942)),P. E. Goddard, Edward Sapir (see Sapir, Edward(1884–1939)), and A. L. Kroeber (see Kroeber, AlfredLouis (1876–1960)). The report took as a basis thealphabet used by J. W. Powell in Contributions toNorth American ethnology (vol. 3, 1877). In 15pages, the pamphlet sets out general principles oftranscription and rules for both a simpler and amore complete system. The principles closely resem-ble those of the IPA, concerning the use of the samesymbol when the same sound occurs, the restrictionson the use of diacritics, the harmonizing of fonts, andthe use of symbols for sound values like those thatthey customarily stand for. The simpler system issuggested for ‘‘ordinary purposes of recording andprinting texts,’’ and the complete system is for therecording and discussing of complex and varied pho-netic phenomena by specialists in phonetics. The fullsystem of vowels is based on Sweet’s 36-vowel system(excluding the ‘shifted’ vowels of his final system).Sweet’s ‘wide’ vowels are normally shown by Greekletters, and ‘narrow’ ones by Roman letters. The con-sonant symbols and prosodic marks are not very dif-ferent from those of the IPA; some exceptions are thatsmall capitals are used for voiceless liquids andnasals, and also for stops and fricatives said to be‘intermediate’ between surd (voiceless) and sonant(voiced). These include unaspirated voiceless stops.The total system is a sophisticated one, providingboth a high degree of precision in transcribing thedetailed features of Native American languages anda satisfactory, simple form for nonspecialists.

Jorgen Forchhammer’sWeltlautschrift

(World Sound Notation)

Forchhammer’s ‘World sound notation’ was pub-lished in Die Grundlage der Phonetik (Heidelberg,1924). It comprises a basic set of 44 Lautgruppen(sound groups, made up of 13 vowels and 31 conso-nants), each comprising a set of sounds that can berepresented by the same letter. The nuances withineach group can be shown by the wide range of diacri-tics, which include subscript numerals to indicatesuccessive points of tongue contact along the palate.Of the 44 basic symbols, 36 are identical with IPAsymbols, but the diacritics are mostly different (seealso Heepe, 1983).

The Copenhagen Conference

In April, 1925, a conference was held in Copenhagen,convened by Otto Jespersen and attended by an inter-national group of 12 specialists in different languagegroups, to try to establish a norm for a universalphonetic script. Their proposals, published in 1926in Phonetic transcription and transliteration, werereprinted in 1983 (Heepe, 1983). The Copenhagengroup firmly rejected the possibility of further iconicalphabets and approved the notion of ‘broad’ tran-scriptions based on the phoneme. Their detailed pro-posals for symbols were given a somewhat coolreception by the Council of the IPA (as reported inLe Maıtre Phonetique in 1927), but the followingprotocols were accepted:

1. [j b] for the bilabial fricatives (instead of [F V])2. [o] for labialization3. [< B 0 U 8 §] for the retroflex series (following

Lundell)4. a raised period [�] to show length5. vertical stress marks ["] and [%] instead of the

oblique [B].

Other proposals (rejected or previously adopted bythe IPA) included a reversed comma below the letterfor nasalization; a new diacritic for palatals; [d] forthe voiced dental fricative; [x X] for velar fricatives;[K G N R L] for uvular stops, nasal, trill, and lateral and[X G] for uvular fricatives; [O] for glottal stop; and [D]as a diacritic for clicks. Among the suggestions for thevowels were abandoning the use of [a] and [A] tosignify different vowels, use of superscript [.] for cen-tral vowels, and umlaut for front rounded vowels,e.g., [u o].

Figure 6 The most current symbol chart of the International Phonetic Association. Reprinted from the International Phonetic

Association (1999) (the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,

Thessaloniki, Greece), with permission.


Machine-Readable Transcriptions

One major consideration in recent years has been thechoice of symbols to represent speech in computersystems. The need to have symbols that are availableon normal keyboards has led to various systems ofmachine-readable phonetic alphabets. The most easi-ly available method of supplementing a lowercaseRoman alphabet is the use of uppercase, and there isa fair amount of agreement among different schemesin allocating uppercase symbols to IPA symbols. An-other area of common ground is the use of<@> for acentral schwa-type vowel, and numerals that resem-ble phonetic symbols, such as <3> standing for [k].The machine-readable Speech Assessment MethodsPhonetic Alphabet (SAMPA), developed in 1987 and1989 by an international group of phoneticians, iscapable of dealing with the transcription of a widerange of languages (see further in Wells (1997); seealso Phonetic Transcription: Analysis).

See also: International Phonetic Association; Bell, Alexan-

der Melville (1819–1905); Boas, Franz (1858–1942);

Brosses, Charles de (1709–1777); Brucke, Ernst (1819–

1891); Bullokar, William (c. 1531–1609); Duponceau,

Pierre Etienne (1760–1844); Ellis, Alexander John (ne

Sharpe) (1814–1890); Firthian Phonology; Hart, John

(?1501-1574); Jespersen, Otto (1860–1943); Jones, Wil-

liam, Sir (1746–1794); Kate Hermansz, Lambert ten

(1674–1731); Kroeber, Alfred Louis (1876–1960); Lepsius,

Carl Richard (1810–1884); Lodwick, Francis (1619–1694);

Meigret, Louis (?1500-1558); Meinhof, Carl Friedrich Mi-

chael (1857–1944); Muller, Friedrich Max (1823–1900);

Passy, Paul Edouard (1859–1940); Phonetic Transcription:

Analysis; Pike, Kenneth Lee (1912–2000); Pitman, Isaac,

Sir (1813–1897); Sanctius, Franciscus (1523–1600); Sapir,

Edward (1884–1939); Steele, Joshua (1700–1791); Storm,

Johan (1836–1920); Sweet, Henry (1845–1912); Volney,

Constantin-Francois Chasseboeuf, Comte de (1757–

1820); Walker, John (1732–1807); Wilkins, John (1614–

1672).

Bibliography

Abercrombie D (1967). Elements of general phonetics.Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Abercrombie D (1981). ‘Extending the Roman alphabet:some orthographic experiments of the past four centuries.’

In Asher R E & Henderson E J A (eds.) Towards ahistory of phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress.

Albright RW (1958). ‘The International Phonetic Alphabet:its background and development.’ International Journalof American Linguistics 24(1B), part III. [Publicationseven of the Indiana Research Center in Anthropology,Folklore, and Linguistics.]

Copenhagen Conference (1925). Phonetic transcriptionand transliteration: proposals of the Copenhagen Confer-ence April 1925. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Heepe M (ed.) (1983). Lautzeichen und ihre Anwendungin verschiedenen Sprachen. Hamburg: Helmut BuskeVerlag.

International Phonetic Association (IPA) (1999). Hand-book of the IPA; a guide to the use of the InternationalPhonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Kelly J (1981). ‘The 1847 alphabet: an episode of phono-typy.’ In Asher R E & Henderson E J A (eds.) Towards ahistory of phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress.

Kemp J A (1999). ‘Transcription, transliteration andthe idea of a universal alphabet.’ In Leopold J (ed.)Prix Volney essay series, vol. I:2. Dordrecht: Kluwer.476–571.

Laziczius G (1966). ‘Schrift und Lautbezeichnung.’ InSebeok T A (ed.) Selected writings of Gyula Laziczius.The Hague: Mouton.

Lepsius C R (1863). Standard alphabet for reducing unwrit-ten languages and foreign graphic systems to a uniformorthography in European letters. [2nd rev. edn. (1981),with an introduction by Kemp J A. Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins].

MacMahon M K C (1986). ‘The International PhoneticAssociation: the first 100 years.’ Journal of the Interna-tional Phonetic Association 16, 33–38.

Pullum G K & Ladusaw W A (1996). Phonetic symbolguide (2nd edn.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sweet H (1880). ‘Sound notation.’ Transactions of the Phil-ological Society, 177–235.

Wellisch H H (1978). The conversion of scripts – its nature,history and utilization. New York: Wiley.

Wells J C (1997). ‘SAMPA computer readable phoneticalphabet.’ In Gibbon D, Moore R & Winski R (eds.)Handbook of standards and resources for spoken lan-guage systems. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Part IV, sect. B.


Model for the Format of Bibliography

Documents

le matre phonetique

international

franklins

foreign graphic

carl friedrich

mouton de

reducing unwritten

international