[WikiEN-l] Re: Pronunciations and IPA/SAMPA

Thu Sep 11 18:15:39 UTC 2003

Toby Bartels wrote:
> This is what morphophones are all about -- a scheme where all
> dialects read in their own sound. We don't have to invent our own
> ad-hoc scheme, since linguists have been studying morphophones, and
> quite often in the context of English, since 1962. (IPA, in contrast,
> does phonemes, or even lower-level structures.)

 > The "Webster's Dictionary" systems often seen in US dictionaries are
 > roughly morphophonic, but not very sophisticated linguistically. (But
 > Merriam-Webster's current system is phonemic, despite it's
 > old-fashioned non-IPA, Webster's-ish look. Therefore the worst of
 > them all, IMO.)

The American Heritage Dictionary gives the following explanation of 
their pronunciation scheme:

"For most words a single set of symbols can represent the 
pronunciation found in each regional variety of American English. You 
will supply those features of your own regional speech that are called 
forth by the pronunciation key in this Dictionary"

And it seems like a panacea for the pronunciation problem. But it's not, 
because some words simply have different underlying representations in 
different dialects, and the system only works for dialects that are 
roughly the same except for a few sound changes. It fails for wildly or 
even mildly divergent dialects. The American Heritage Dictionary system 
sweeps this problem under the rug by saying "The pronunciations are 
exclusively those of educated speech", which, to my mind, is a cop-out, 
and not a satisfactory solution for Wikipedia.

However, the question of dialect remains. Obviously listing 
pronunciations in all possible dialects is not a reasonable solution, 
and indeed, nor are any of the systems used in American dictionaries. I 
recognize that the general task of specifying a pronunciation that 
speakers of any dialect will automatically speak in their dialect is not 
ideally handled by IPA. However, I have do not know of any system 
advocated by linguists other than what phonologists call "broad 
transcription" using IPA. Can you point me to a book or paper, written 
by linguists, that specifies such a system for English, and advocates 
its use by and for general (non-academic) readers?

I have never encoutered such a system, and I doubt that one exists. 
Barring the existence of a standard system, I don't really see that 
Wikipedia has any other options besides IPA for specifying 
pronunciations. Certainly I hope no one thinks Wikipedia should invent 
its own system. When it comes to standards, it should be our job to 
follow them and describe them, not create them.

So I advocate having IPA transcriptions for standard dialects (like 
Standard American English and Received Pronunciation), and having 
special pages describing how the various nonstardard dialects differ 
both phonetically and phonemically from the standards. I don't know much 
about morphophones and I'm not sure it's a concept widely accepted by 
linguists.

PS: I have made a page on meta called [[Pronunciations]] and am going 
through the list archives and posting links to relevant discussions 
there. I'm not sure what the policy should be regarding where further 
discussion should occur, so if you want to respond, do so either here or 
on the list.

-- David [[User:Nohat]]