Research Topics in Language Studies
Unit 2 (week 2)
Speaking and meaning: comparing varieties of spoken English
In this unit we are concerned with the system of signs by which we are able to transcribe the sound of the vowels and consonants which make up the phonological system of language. As discussed previously, this system is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Although the IPA does use some of the letters of the English alphabet, it is in principle separate from and independent of the English alphabet. That is to say, a letter may stand for one sound in IPA and something quite different in the English spelling system. Thus, while in English, the letter i most typically stands for the vowel sound in pin, in the IPA the sign [i] stands for the Received Pronunciation English sound that in English would typically be spelt ee (as in heed) or ea (as in please).
The point of the IPA is to provide a system by which each sound will always be represented by one and only one symbol. Thus the sound in Received Pronunciation (RP) heed, please, sieve etc will always be represented by the same IPA symbol [i]. Similarly, that sound will always be represented by [i] regardless of the language it occurs in - whether in Spanish, Japanese and so on. The IPA is also formulated to provide signs for all the sound which occur in all the language of the world. Thus it provides symbols for many sounds which do not occur in Received Pronunciation English (for which, of course, there is no English spelling).
The IPA is also designed to record the more or less subtle differences in sounds between speakers of the different dialects of a language. Speakers of southern dialects of English (including Received Pronunciation) have different a sounds for the a in pat, bad, cap etc versus the a sound in path, laugh and grass. The a in RP pat is made with the tongue forward in the mouth, with the a in path is made with the tongue back in the mouth - the difference is between a front and a back a sound. In this, Received Pronunciation differs from many northern dialects where there is no difference in the a sound between pat and path, lap and laugh, and so on. IPA enables us to accurately record these differences in the dialects. Thus it provides for the following transcriptions,
