From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Apr 07 2011 - 09:38:41 CDT
In Daniel's reference image, there was also the case of a combining up
tack BELOW the small letter s (example given for English word "his"),
instead of above it. Your images are only showing the parts of the
table concerning vowels. Just below this table, there was also a
section with the diacritics expliciting the pronunciation of
consonnants.
All these examples are in fact showing an usage of diacritics to show
the pronunciation as an interlinear notation on top of the standard
English orthography which is not modified (not even the punctuations
which are preserved as well). This constrasts with IPA-like notations
that completely ignore the orthography, and concentrate only in
showing the pronunciation (of vowels, consonnants, diphtongs, clicks,
stress, tones, pauses...).
This notation works roughly well with English as it rarely uses
diacritics for its orthography, except in rare words borrowed from
other languages (notably the acute accent, the tilde and sometimes the
cedilla). However this additional phonetic notation may conflict with
some words, notably for people names and toponyms (for example the
diaeresis). But it cannot represent all phonetics needed for other
languages, or even for some regional variants of English. I thnk it is
only appropriate for "standard" (simplified) American English, but it
may even be overkill as it creates distinctions that are not even
heard by many native English speakers (some displayed distinctions are
frequent allophones), and tnhis notation could be poor with British
English (due to its distinct inherited orthography where letter pairs
are still reversed, or mute letters from former diphtongs or vowel
length distinctions are still written orthographically, for
etymological reasons).
But for all other usages, IPA notations are more precise (in phonetic
notations) and allow easier management of allophones (in phonologic
notations, notably in dictionnaries) using a conventional unification
of some IPA symbols, based on the most common usage by various
speakers in the region for which the dictionnary is created.
Philippe.
2011/4/7 Andrey V. Lukyanov <land@long.yar.ru>:
>
> There is a similar picture here:
>
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/NSRW_Key_to_Pronunciation.png
>
> (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work/Vol_I/Key_to_Pronunciation)
>
> At that picture, this diacritic looks like a dot merged with macron, so it
> may have different shapes.
>
> ==
>
>
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