Phonetic Transcription: History

in 1924. Schmidt kept most of Lepsius’s symbols,
adding some diacritics to distinguish sounds left
undifferentiated by Lepsius, but introduced the IPA
symbols , (and turned versions of them)
and , mostly to replace symbols with diacritics.
For the consonants, to give some examples, < > and
are used for the dental fricatives instead of
Lepsius’s and , and in Schmidt’s revised
edition the inverted forms of , , and
replaced Lepsius’s click symbols , , and .
Interestingly, the 1989 revision of the IPA alphabet
adopted Lepsius’s click symbols (slightly modified).
Native American Languages
In 1916, the Smithsonian Institution published a
pamphlet entitled Phonetic transcription of Indian
languages, embodying the report of the committee
of the American Anthropological Association, consisting
of Franz Boas (see Boas, Franz (1858–1942)),
P. E. Goddard, Edward Sapir (see Sapir, Edward
(1884–1939)), and A. L. Kroeber (see Kroeber, Alfred
Louis (1876–1960)). The report took as a basis the
alphabet used by J. W. Powell in Contributions to
North American ethnology (vol. 3, 1877). In 15
pages, the pamphlet sets out general principles of
transcription and rules for both a simpler and a
more complete system. The principles closely resemble
those of the IPA, concerning the use of the same
symbol when the same sound occurs, the restrictions
on the use of diacritics, the harmonizing of fonts, and
the use of symbols for sound values like those that
they customarily stand for. The simpler system is
suggested for ‘‘ordinary purposes of recording and
printing texts,’’ and the complete system is for the
recording and discussing of complex and varied phonetic
phenomena by specialists in phonetics. The full
system 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 Greek
letters, and ‘narrow’ ones by Roman letters. The consonant
symbols and prosodic marks are not very different
from those of the IPA; some exceptions are that
small capitals are used for voiceless liquids and
nasals, 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, providing
both a high degree of precision in transcribing the
detailed features of Native American languages and
a satisfactory, simple form for nonspecialists.
Jörgen Forchhammer’s Weltlautschrift
(World Sound Notation)
Forchhammer’s ‘World sound notation’ was published
in Die Grundlage der Phonetik (Heidelberg,
1924). It comprises a basic set of 44 Lautgruppen
(sound groups, made up of 13 vowels and 31 consonants),
each comprising a set of sounds that can be
represented by the same letter. The nuances within
each group can be shown by the wide range of diacritics,
which include subscript numerals to indicate
successive points of tongue contact along the palate.
Of the 44 basic symbols, 36 are identical with IPA
symbols, but the diacritics are mostly different (see
also Heepe, 1983).
The Copenhagen Conference
Phonetic Transcription: History 409
In April, 1925, a conference was held in Copenhagen,
convened by Otto Jespersen and attended by an international
group of 12 specialists in different language
groups, to try to establish a norm for a universal
phonetic script. Their proposals, published in 1926
in Phonetic transcription and transliteration, were
reprinted in 1983 (Heepe, 1983). The Copenhagen
group firmly rejected the possibility of further iconic
alphabets and approved the notion of ‘broad’ transcriptions
based on the phoneme. Their detailed proposals
for symbols were given a somewhat cool
reception by the Council of the IPA (as reported in
Le Maître Phonétique in 1927), but the following
protocols were accepted:
1. [j b] for the bilabial fricatives (instead of [F V])
2. [o] for labialization
3. [< B 0 U 8 §] for the retroflex series (following
Lundell)
4. a raised period [ � ] to show length
5. vertical stress marks ["] and [%] instead of the
oblique [B].
Other proposals (rejected or previously adopted by
the IPA) included a reversed comma below the letter
for nasalization; a new diacritic for palatals; [d] for
the 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 the
vowels were abandoning the use of [a] and [A] to
signify different vowels, use of superscript [ . ] for central
vowels, and umlaut for front rounded vowels,
e.g., [ü ö].
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.