LINGUIST List 12.2315

Wed Sep 19 2001

Review: Handbook of the IPA (2nd review)

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  • Elgar-Paul MAGRO, Review: Handbook of the International Phonetic Association

    Message 1: Review: Handbook of the International Phonetic Association

     Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 11:18:44 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Elgar-Paul MAGRO <epmagroyahoo.com>
    Subject: Review: Handbook of the International Phonetic Association


    Handbook of the International Phonetic Association : A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (1999) Cambridge University Press, ix+204pp, hardback ISBN 0-521-65236-7, $49.95; paperback ISBN 0-521-63571-1.

    Elgar-Paul Magro, Paris III--Sorbonne Nouvelle University.

    [A previous review of this book was posted at: http://linguistlist.org/issues/12/12-822.html --Eds.]

    BOOK DESCRIPTION a. Purpose of the book As the title of the book suggests, this publication of the International Phonetic Association is meant to be a handbook and a guide, a readily available "user's manual" for the International Phonetic Alphabet (henceforth IPA), in world-wide use for more than a century for the transcription of the sounds of languages. This publication is aimed at a very vast audience: "The new 'Handbook' is intended to be a reference work not only for language teachers and phoneticians interested in the sounds of different languages, but also for speech technologists, speech pathologists, theoretical phonologists, and others" (p.vii). Moreover the breadth of readership aimed at is not only horizontal, but also vertical, ranging "from those who are experienced phoneticians to those who know nothing about phonetics" (ibid.). However, one is to be careful in that this "practically-oriented" 'Handbook', although the theory it presents on phonetics is more thorough than that of the old 'Principles', does not self-allegedly attempt to do the job of a phonetics textbook or a critique of the IPA. The reader is otherwise warned to consult numerous phonetics textbooks readily available on the market. Ultimately the purpose of the 'Handbook' is "not to provide a comprehensive or balanced education in phonetics, but to provide a concise summary of information needed for getting to grips with the IPA" (p.viii).

    b. Book's contents The 'Handbook' is divided into three parts. After a foreword establishing and briefly discussing the affiliation of the 'Handbook' to the old 'Principles', comes a chart with the IPA symbols. Part I contains a forty-page-long introduction to the IPA and to the phonetic principles underlying the alphabet. It is subdivided into ten subsections which start with a brief definition and statement of the aims of the IPA. The second section, entitled 'Phonetic description and the IPA chart', is a most interesting one as it presents, in the light of phonetic principles, the different categories of symbols used in the IPA chart, based mainly on the consonant-vowel distinction and taking also into account diacritics, suprasegmentals and other symbols. The following subsection proceeds to exemplify the different symbols with words taken from 51 different languages belonging to some fifteen different language families. Subsequent sections present the phonemic principle, inherent to the IPA, the difference between broad and narrow transcriptions, the possibility of the co-existence of different transcriptions of the phonemes for any particular language. Sections 7 and 8 hint at different ways of working with the IPA (in handwriting, in print, on computers, with Braille) and even going beyond it (especially for the description of paralinguistic phenomena linked to fields such as speech pathology and language acquisition among others). Section 9 raises some problematic issues, namely the difficulties encountered in segmentation and transcription. Finally Section 10 insists on the link between the IPA and the phonological theory and serves as a conclusion to this very theoretical Part 1. Then follows a much longer (116 pages), more practical Part 2 containing twenty-nine illustrations of the International Phonetic Alphabet. These illustrations have already been published by the International Phonetic Association in its Journal from 1989 to 1997. Each contains a phonetic and phonological description of the sounds of the language it illustrates and is based on the transcription of the fable 'The North Wind and the Sun', with the exception of the illustration of Taba which uses a different text. Part 3, forty-eight pages long, is a rather heterogeneous section made up of a series of five appendices. Whereas the first appendix presents the current formulation of the principles of the International Phonetic Association as approved at the 1989 Convention of the Association held at Kiel, Appendices 2 and 3 deal with the computer coding of IPA symbols and with extensions to the IPA respectively. The fourth appendix gives general information about the Association, ranging from an outline of its history to links how to find more about its activities. The book closes with a final appendix consisting of larger-scale versions of the IPA chart.

    CRITICAL EVALUATION This book is the long-awaited sequel to the 'Principles' of the International Phonetic Association, which contained the theoretical background underlying the IPA. First published in 1900, the 'Principles' have been out of print for a very long time, thus becoming very hard to lay one's hands on. Not only are they out of stock but few libraries have them in their collection. For instance, a personal research indicated that in the Parisian region only one University library, that of Paris XIII University at Villetanneuse, contains an old copy of them. Moreover, having last been revised way back in 1949, the 'Principles' inevitably needed a modern, updated version taking into consideration the evolution of the principles of the International Phonetic Association themselves as well as the current symbols and uses of the IPA.

    Part One As previously mentioned, the first Part of the 'Handbook' contains the phonetic theory underlying the IPA as well as a first exemplification of the use of the phonetic symbols. True to the Handbook's objectives as stated in the Foreword, a manual in phonetics would be a very good companion to this introduction to phonetic description included in this first part of the Handbook. Indeed, the authors here limit themselves to describing the phonetic theory necessary to justify and explain the choices behind the IPA symbols and to throw enough light to the understanding of their use. Indeed, section 2 of this Part is a very successful, though concise, introduction to the basic distinction between the different symbols presented earlier in the IPA chart, namely distinction between consonants and vowels, then between pulmonic and non-pulmonic consonants, finally between segmentals and suprasegmentals. The other fundamental distinction between sound and phoneme, the phonemic principle, very close to the heart of the International Phonetic Association, is explained soon later, in section 4. Here the reader is made to understand that the IPA is the perfect tool for handling both transcriptions (phonetic and phonemic), and the difference between broad phonemic and narrow phonetic transcriptions is further explained in a later section. Very useful is section 3 for it exemplifies the different IPA symbols through words taken from a wide variety of languages. Also useful is the way the author proceeds to initiate the readers to different problems they might encounter while using the IPA, namely meeting different IPA symbols in the transcription of certain language sounds as well as problems of segmentation. Likewise, the reader is made aware of the extensions of the use of IPA, going from usage in handwriting to print and computers, as well as adaptation to Braille. Links to the Appendices containing the computer symbols are timely included here. All this is done in a very clear pedagogical style, fit for both the learned and the inexperienced reader. A couple of improvements could be suggested, especially on the typographical level. For instance, in section 3.1 ('Exemplification of the symbols'), the classification of the different symbols would have been more striking if there were bold headings for the large categories (consonants; vowels; other symbols; suprasegmentals; diacritics) and typologically different subheadings for each, where appropriate. No main heading for consonants exists, no subheading for pulmonic consonants either; all headings, main or secondary, look the same so that there is no distinction between let's say the category of plosives (itself a sub-category of pulmonic consonants) and the category of vowels. Moreover, in the category of suprasegmentals, some subdivision would only have made the explanation clearer (stress and length, boundaries, tone). Finally whereas it is clearly pointed out that the two alternative systems of tone transcriptions in IPA "are usually used in two different ways" (p.23), the difference in use is not made sufficiently clear through the examples provided, at least to the inexperienced reader. Explanation of prosodic features such as fundamental frequency are a bit scarce.

    Part Two The language families represented here are less diverse than those represented in Section 3 of Part One. The most represented one is, understandably, that of Indo- European languages (16 out of 29), then comes the Afro- Asiatic one (with 4 languages illustrated), followed by two Austronesian languages (Taba and Tukang Besi). Sino- Tibetan, Niger-Congo, Japanese, Altaic, Tai-Kadai, Korean and Uralic are the other language families represented, each illustrated by just one language. One cannot fail to regret the limited number of languages illustrated as compared to the 'Principles' that contain around fifty illustrations or specimens. Languages like Italian and Spanish are unfortunately lacking among the Indo-European languages and more language families could have been illustrated, including Amerindian, Australian Aborigene, and Caucasian. Yet one has to appreciate the fact that in the 'Handbook' the illustrations are not just limited to the IPA transcription of a common text, but each presents the chart of IPA symbols representing the phonemes of the respective language as well as several phonetic and phonological comments on these sounds. Here again the style is more or less constant in spite of the different linguists who have authored the different illustrations. Each illustration is divided into basically the main subsections, namely an introduction, the IPA chart presenting the phonemes of the language described, a section on consonants, another one on vowels, another one still on stress and prosody, then a section on conventions, followed by an IPA transcription and an orthographic version of the recorded passage. However one can regret the lack of further co- ordination between the authors. Let's take a closer look at the different subsections of each illustration. The introduction does not always contain the same kind of information. Very few contain details about all of the following: a) the language itself (language family, number of speakers, geographical distribution, position of the language in the linguistic background of the country where applicable, etc.); b) the dialect situation (dialect chosen, other dialects and their geographical / social status, main differences between dialects); c) the speaker (or speakers) on whose recordings the illustration is based (age, sex, geographical and social context); d) the style of speech, almost always a standard colloquial one. Many of the above details are often scattered in other subsections and sometimes even omitted. Indeed, for some languages such as German, French, Igbo and Farsi two or three lines of introduction is all the information the reader gets. Others however including Dutch, Irish and Hebrew tend to be more exhaustive. Moreover, some choose different speakers, others only choose one; most choose young educated speakers, some base their analysis on much older representatives of the language. A constant in the consonant and vowel sections is the presentation of an IPA chart together with a list of key- words exemplifying the different phonemes, including versions of the key-words transcribed in IPA, orthographically and then translated into English. The orthographic version of the words, though, is often omitted. Moreover, one notices that, however trivial this might seem, a minority of illustrations prefer starting their presentation of phonemes with the vowel section rather than the consonant section. Some illustrations present a couple of extra sections, entitled for instance Vowel Length or Geminates, which could have easily been regrouped under the more general sections of Vowels and Consonants instead of being presented as sections in their own right. Then follows a section entitled in many different ways depending on the author(s) of the illustrations. The most common name used for this section is 'Stress' for it contains general information about the stress and accent of the language. Some illustrations give more ample details about the prosodic properties of the language, describing the different intonational patterns of the language. The illustration of Portuguese is particularly detailed in this section which it entitles 'Prosody', subdividing it into three parts namely 'Lexical stress', 'Rhythm, vowel reduction and devoicing' and 'Intonation'. However other illustrations, such as that of French, entitle this section 'Prosody' even if they only give a very short, one-sentence description about lexical stress. Further homogeneity between the different illustrations would have been desirable in this respect. The following section on conventions, which is supposed to give the manual user information about the phonetic realisation of the phonemes of a language, is not presented in the same rigorous way throughout the whole of Part 2. If many illustrations, such as those of American English and Japanese, make a clear-cut distinction between the phonological sections (on consonants and vowels) and the phonetic one (conventions), others tend to present overlapping sections. Sometimes information about conventions is included in the previous sections such that quite a handful of illustrations, including those of French, Dutch, Irish, Hausa and Slovene, omit completely the Conventions section. Moreover the illustrations differ in the amount of detail given about the phonetic realisations of the sounds of the language presented, ranging from a couple of lines to a whole page in length. One obviously has to make concessions wherever this happens to be due to insufficient linguistic exploration to date. As regards the IPA transcription, the first illustration, that of American English, contains a very full, thus promising section, presenting two different transcriptions, one broad phonemic and the other narrow phonetic, thus illustrating very clearly the theoretical part on transcriptions of Part 1 of the Handbook. Unluckily, all the other illustrations, with the sole exception of Korean, present only one IPA transcription, often without even specifying whether it is a broad or a narrow one. A word of praise goes for the languages which present other transcriptions besides the one in IPA, thus giving a truthful account of their own linguistic traditions. The same holds for languages not using the Roman alphabet and presenting more than one orthographic version of the recorded passage, one in the alphabet currently used, the other transliterated in the Roman alphabet. Finally, references are appreciated whenever they are provided at the end of the illustration, and the reader would have surely wished to find references systematically for all the languages or varieties of languages illustrated in this Part. One finds it hard to understand the omission of the electronic addresses of the different authors, especially considering the otherwise modern, multimedia-oriented nature of this handbook. All in all, the illustrations do keep to the same model in a wide, loose sense but it is a pity that that they do not conform to it to a further extent. Even though one might object that this helps prevent the reader from a certain monotonous rigour of style whilst leaving the authors in partial liberty, further co-ordination between the authors of the different illustrations would have ensured a smoother, neater, more coherent and better structured result, suitable for a handbook of this calibre. Nonetheless, considering the number of languages illustrated and the number of authors involved, one can understand if not justify this unfortunate lack of symmetry which, one must admit, does not interfere with the ultimate scope of this part about illustrations.

    Part Three Very pleasantly useful and modern is the third and last part of the Handbook, with its five appendices described above. The computer coding of IPA symbols found in Appendix 2 is something which will surely help out numerous users of the IPA. Besides, the listing of symbols used in phonetics is pretty exhaustive as it includes not only symbols of the IPA but also others not recommended by the International Phonetic Association but still possible to encounter. Moreover, the listing clearly points out which of the symbols are not, or no longer, in IPA usage. Furthermore, each symbol is accompanied by a convenient and systematic name, something which any user of the IPA will find handy. The ExtIPA chart included in Appendix 3, likewise including the symbol name, the phonetic symbol, phonetic description and IPA number, is sure to be of interest to all those dealing with the transcription of disordered speech. Appendix 4 is of deep interest to a very wide range of readers. It goes from a brief history of the International Phonetic Association, way back to 1886 when it was founded in Paris under the name of "Dhi Fon�tik T�cerz' As�ci�con", to the most recent developments of its Alphabet. It includes the statutes and by-laws of the Association. Particularly useful and intelligent of all is the last section presenting Internet links how to find out more about the Association. I include in this review two links which may yet be unknown to some of LinguistList's readers: a) the official IPA website: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html The site is really worth paying a visit. It includes recordings of the sounds of the IPA, downloadable audio files complementing the Handbook reviewed here, sample papers of the IPA Certificate Examination in English Phonetics as well as a direct link to join the Association. b) the monthly foNETiks Electronic Newsletter which can be easily joined by sending an e-mail to: mailbasemailbase.ac.uk.

    Pedagogical clarity One of this handbook's achievements is undoubtedly its clarity of style and the attention that has been made on a pedagogical base. This surely reflects the traditional pedagogical orientation of the Association which initially devised a phonetic alphabet in order to simplify the teaching of foreign languages. Indeed, the breadth of the audience the manual is aimed at demanded a style not easy to find let alone maintain: one that would be neither too basic for the learned nor too obscure for the beginner. This is constant throughout the book, with the exception of a couple of instances when specialised terms are used without explanation or previous introduction. Another way the authors show their preoccupation with pedagogy and with making their publication a true handbook, is the presentation of the IPA charts. In fact, the book opens and closes with reference IPA charts. The larger- scale versions of the IPA chart placed at the end of the Handbook, including the corresponding IPA computer numbers, are "divided into sections for ease of reference (p.200)". The authors point out that these charts "may be copied and used while consulting parts 1 and 2 of the Handbook, or enlarged for teaching purposes" (ibid.), thus renewing the original teaching orientation of the Association while making out of their handbook an indispensable reference for all users of the IPA.

    Concluding remarks All in all, one can conclude by saying that the 'Handbook' achieves its aims to be an indispensable reference in the use of IPA, a very good manual for speech clinicians, language teachers, phoneticians and researchers in phonetics and linguistics alike. Though it does not replace the use of phonetic manuals, it comes in very handy for users of the IPA. Finally, in spite of certain lacunae in the putting together of the 29 illustrations, this remains a highly structured, clear and coherent Handbook it is in the interest of all linguistic libraries, private or public, to have.

    BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Elgar-Paul Magro is a second-year Ph.D. student in linguistics at the University of the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris. His subject of research is the syntax of the oral language and he has been carrying out experimental studies on the intonational and gestural properties of connected spontaneous speech in French and Maltese. Besides his doctoral research, he has been tutoring first-year BA students in linguistics at the Sorbonne, and is also currently working as a visiting lecturer at different universities (Paris, Le Mans and Malta), where he will be giving a number of credits in French linguistics. His aim, upon achievement of his doctorate, is to become a proficient devoted lecturer of French but above all he seeks to become a fully-fledged linguist involved in research on the international scene.