Subject: ipa , austerlitz

i learned phonetics and phonetic field technique from robert austerlitz ( 1923-1994 ) . after reading joseph stemberger 's comments on ipa and democratizing the process of standarizing phonetic writing ( in linguist 6 . 185 ) , i thought about how austerlitz taught . austerlitz never asked us to memorize ipa or any other system . instead , he taught us several different systems of notation all at once . he expected us to be able to describe sounds by place of articulation , manner of articulation , and so on . we were expected to + know + ipa , of course , and he referred us to several different sources , each of which had a slightly different version of it . but there were no standard systems in his classroom . he was a remarkable teacher and made me a fieldworker . he used a number of symbols that are rarely seen anywhere else . one of his favorites was the cardinal vowel " 61 " , by which ( if i remember correctly ) he meant the high back unrounded vowel written " turned m " in ipa . this " 61 " was merely the letter " uy " from the cyrillic alphabet . in his field-technique classes , we were encouraged to make up new symbols to describe what we heard . i remember , during a session with a speaker from shanqhae , he expressed the greatest pleasure when joseph davis wrote the initial consonant of ' cooked rice ' with a digraph made up of a " v " with a lowercase " f " planted between its arms . this expressed graphically the unusual shanqhae sound that davis had described - it was clearly a labiodental fricative , but somehow sounded both voiced and voiceless at the same time . austerlitz first mentioned that " they " in the ipa would say that diacritics could be used to express this , then recounted chao 's claim that many chinese dialects have initial consonants that are in-between voiced and voiceless , and went on to discuss ways that he and others had thought of to write this . actually , though , the use of those ipa voiced / voiceless or breathy voicing diacritics might not be quite right . the " voiced " initials in shanqhae lower register words are neither contrastively voiced nor contrastively unvoiced ; the apparent " breathy semi-voicing " seems actually to be feature of the + tone + , not the initials . some speakers pronounce it with the initial , some before the initial , some afterwards , some all the way through the syllable , and some not at all . davis ' symbol was a good idea at the time , though , because it expressed this lack of contrast vividly . i have met quite a number of linguists who have complaints about ipa or about the variety of systems in use , but these people hardly ever seem to be fieldworkers . i do n't believe i know any two fieldworkers who use phonetic symbols quite the same way , and most of them do n't seem to care at all . everyone seems to have different preferences ; well , so what ? some people , for instance , can't abide to write the " h " for aspiration + above + the line , and write it seemingly as a full segment . others leave the " h " out altogether , saying that ( in english , for instance ) it need not be written explicitly . the chinese tend to write aspiration with the reversed apostrophe of greek , probably continuing the tradition of older systems of romanization . the chinese , in fact , have a whole class of vowels - frictionless sibilants - that have n't made their way into ipa , as well as a special set of alveolo-palatal consonants . are these really necessary ? maybe not , but the chinese are not going to give them up ; be sure of that . for my part , i dislike plain schwa - i prefer to use the four schwa-area vowels ( close-mid and open-mid , rounded and unrounded ) that ipa now recognizes , and even before they became official i was using some of their current symbols , although i sometimes used special diacritics with schwa , too . these vowels are important in some of the areas where i work , in rural fwujiann . but every chinese dialectologist i know uses schwa like mad , and for a number of vowels that i consider quite distinct . we understand each other , though . fieldworkers are basically explorers . for the most part we do not go into the field to codify the known , but search for the unknown . we play with our symbols , try different ways of writing things , develop habits of transcription that are as distinctive as handwriting and reflect different ways of interpreting sounds . it is natural in these circumstances that different standards should take shape . fieldwork is an adventure , and transcriptional practice reflects that . i can't imagine why anyone thinks we need a single , " democratically devised " standard . ipa of some sort is good enough for most people who actually use it , and if someone does n't like it , he or she will borrow from some other tradition - american , perhaps - or invent another . if i want to look at that person 's notes , i will just learn the system - it might take as long as 10 minutes - and that will be that . where is the problem ? why should i trade my freedom of transcriptional expression for a rigid code ? why would that benefit me ? no , the " chaos of multiple standards " that stemberger mentions does n't bother me at all . there + are + two things that do bother me , though . one is the frequent changes in ipa that have been bandied about recently . when the kiel version of ipa was first promulgated , i was aghast at the large number of weird-looking symbols . then came the revision of kiel , and things were different again . i do n't mind adjustments , as long as they are introduced very gradually . like the agreement a couple of years ago that + either + way of writing " g " was acceptable - that only took a few decades to get straight . the idea that lots of changes have to be introduced and introduced right away frightens me a little . that is n't to say i do n't enjoy hearing the different proposals people advocate , but i will probably still stick to my own transcriptional habits , even so . the other thing that bothers me is the mob of systematizers , standardizers , formalists , and unificationists who seem to pop up everywhere in linguistics like dandelions by the side of the road . to my mind , formal systematization is the enemy of good fieldwork . and if a democratic vote + is + ever taken on the subject of phonetic alphabets , i hereby move that it be restricted to people who do a + minimum of 100 hours of fieldwork or acoustic measurement + every year for their own , fresh research . as for the rest of you - you are welcome to listen , enjoy the show , but please do n't try to tell me my business . david prager branner , yuen ren society asian l&l , do-21 , university of washington seattle , wa 98195 ( charmii @ u . washington . edu )
