Re: Tit'xka (Pretty Long Post)

Sheets, Jeff wrote:
>In extreme laymans terms when should I differentiate between // and
>[] ?  I never got that either.  Thanks for the help, though, I
>understand the difference now. :)
>
Let me have a go:

Both // and [] encloses transcriptions of utterences. The difference
is that [] is used for narrow transcriptions while // is used for
broad transcriptions. So // (broad transcription) only shows
functional differences, i.e. differences between sounds which are
used to distinguish word meaning. It uses just enough symbols to
represent each phoneme of the language in question with a symbol of
its own. On the other hand, [] (narrow transcription), is much more
detailed and attempts to provide a more faithful representation of
speech. It normally represents the allophones of a phoneme that
occur in various contexts, but can be made to show even finer
detail, if necessary. To do this it uses a much larger number of
symbols together with diacritic marks to distinguish subtle nuances
of pronounciation. Below, are examples of broad and narrow
transcriptions of English words. Note the various differences of the
phoneme /t/ in the narrow transcription:

  "steep"  /stip/  [sti:p]

  "attend"  /@tend/  [@t_hend] - the raised _h shows aspiration

  "two"  /tu/  [t_h_wu] - the raised _w shows lip rounding. Note
that in this example, aspiration (_h) also occurs so that /t/ in
this position is both rounded and aspirated.

  "eighth"  /eitT/  [eIt_dT] - the subscript _d marks dental sounds.
Here in anticipation for the dental fricative [T], the tongue makes
contact with the upper front teeth rather than the alveolar ridge.

  "sit"  /sit/  [sI?t] - the symbol [?] marks pre-glottalisation. In
some dialects, the word ends in a glottal stop with no [t] element
at all.

In the broad transcription, English /t/ is represented always by the
same symbol because it is not necessary to include the features of
aspiration, lip-rounding, etc. to differentiate meaning between
words. In the narrow transcription, English /t/ can be represented
by different symbols or with diacritics to show the subtle
differences in the pronounciation of /t/.

Hope that helps,
-Kristian- 8-)