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53THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF TRANSCRIPTION Karimova Sh.1, Kadirova L.2
1Karimova Shahodat - Teacher;
2Kadirova Lola - Teacher, FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT,
TASHKENT MEDICAL ACADEMY, TASHKENT, REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
Abstract: transcription is of great theoretical and practical value as it is used in the scientific-theoretical investigation of the phonetic systems and teaching foreign language pronunciation. Transcription is a special phonetic alphabet by means of which the sound system or a system of phonemes of a particular language is represented.
Keywords: transcription, phonetic alphabet, vowels, consonants, IPA.
Usually two principal types of transcription are distinguished: phonetic and phonological. Phonetic transcription represents a system of sounds and changes their pronunciation undergo. The symbols of a phonetic transcription are enclosed in square brackets [1]. Phonological transcription denotes the system of segmental phonemes of a language. Its symbols are denoted between two slanting bars.
The great difference between English spelling and pronunciation makes the use and choose special phonetic symbols to avoid misunderstanding. The transcription symbol of a certain language is based on the International Phonetic Alphabet. The most widely used transcription of English is known as «the broad form» of phonetic transcription which was suggested by an outstanding English linguist Daniel Jones. This transcription is used in the well-known dictionary «The Concise Dictionary of Current English» by Fowler's and in some other dictionaries. The phonetic symbols used in the broad form of transcription are as followings [2]:
Vowels: [i:, i, e, ae, a:, o , э : , u, u:, э : , э , ei, ou, ai, au, ia, еэ, ua, зэ].
Consonants: [p, b, t, d, k, g, s, z, tj, d3, f, v, 0, 3, J, 3, h, m, n, 1, r, j, w].
Besides, there is a «narrow form» of phonetic transcription used in some text-books and dictionaries. There is no difference between the phonetic symbols of the broad and the narrow forms of transcription for the consonants.
As to the transcription of the American English vowels and some consonants they are indicated by different symbols. However, the transcription symbols given in «A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English» and in «A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of British and American English» are used in this book as well. They resemble the symbols of the narrow form of transcription.
There are two principal types of brackets used to set off IPA transcriptions:
• [square brackets] are used with phonetic notations, possibly including details of the pronunciation that may not be used for distinguishing words in the language being transcribed, but which the author nonetheless wishes to document.
• /slashes/ are used for phonemic notations, which note only features that are distinctive in the language, without any extraneous detail. For example, while the /p/ sounds of pin and spin are pronounced slightly differently in English (and this difference would be meaningful in some languages), the difference is not meaningful in English. Thus phonemically the words are /pin/ and /spin/, with the same /p/ phoneme. However, to capture the difference between them (the allophones of /p/), they can be transcribed phonetically as [phin] and [spin].
Other conventions are less commonly seen:
• Double slashes //...//, pipes |...|, double pipes ||...||, or braces {...} may be used around a word to denote its underlying structure, more abstract even than that of phonemes.
• Double square brackets [[...] are used for extra-precise transcription. They indicate that a letter has its cardinal IPA value. For example, [a] is an open front vowel, rather than the perhaps slightly different value (such as open central) that "[a]" may be used to transcribe in a particular language. Thus two
vowels transcribed for easy legibility as ([e]) and ([s]) may be clarified as actually being [el and [[e]; ([5]) may be more precisely [5].
• Angle brackets are used to clarify that the letters represent the original orthography of the language, or sometimes an exact transliteration of a non-Latin script, not the IPA; or, within the IPA, that the letters themselves are indicated, not the sound values that they carry. For example, (pin) and (spin) would be seen for those words, which do not contain the ee sound [i] of the IPA letter (i). Italics are perhaps more commonly used for this purpose when full words are being written (as pin, spin above), but may not be sufficiently clear for individual letters and digraphs.
The International Phonetic Alphabet is occasionally modified by the Association. After each modification, the Association provides an updated simplified presentation of the alphabet in the form of a chart. Not all aspects of the alphabet can be accommodated in a chart of the size published by the IPA.
Although the IPA offers over 160 symbols for transcribing speech, only a relatively small subset of these will be used to transcribe any one language. It is possible to transcribe speech with various levels of precision. A precise phonetic transcription, in which sounds are described in a great deal of detail, is known as a narrow transcription [1]. A coarser transcription which ignores some of this detail is called a broad transcription. Both are relative terms, and both are generally enclosed in square brackets. Broad phonetic transcriptions may restrict themselves to easily heard details, or only to details that are relevant to the discussion at hand, and may differ little if at all from phonemic transcriptions.
References
1. Payne E., 2005. "Phonetic variation in Italian consonant gemination". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 35: 153-181.
2. Perry. T., 2000. Phonological/phonetic assessment of an English-speaking adult with dysarthria.
