Page 104 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes
θ thin, author x this, father
f sheep ¥ vision
(× loch) j yes
4. Stress
Likewise, there is no disagreement among IPA users about the symbols for word stress (although
there may well be disagreement about the analysis of secondary stress). Primary stress is shown
by the mark’, placed before the syllable concerned. (Compare the older, non-lPA, dictionary
tradition, where it was shown by the mark ‘ after the syllable.)
Secondary stress, if shown at all, is indicated by a similar mark below the line.
5. Vowels: quantitative and qualitative
The pronunciation scheme used in the first twelve editions of EPD was one that required rather
few special symbols. It achieved this parsimony by transcribing the English vowels
quantitatively. This meant writing /i:/ for the vowel of reed and /i/ for that of rid, using the
same phonetic symbol with and without a length mark.
i + reed
i rid
]+ cord
] cod
The vowel of cord was written / ] :/, that of cod / ] /, and similarly for other pairs. Thus the
difference in vowel quality (vowel timbre, vowel colour) between such pairs of vowels was not
shown explicitly but had to be inferred from the presence or absence of the length mark.
i reed
I or ~ rid
] cord
Z cod
Many phoneticians were dissatisfied with this scheme, feeling that the difference in vowel
quality was at least as important as that of quantity. They preferred to use a scheme in which
each vowel was shown by a separate letter-shape, without the use of length marks. Thus /i/
was used for reed, /w/ for rid, / ] / for cord and /Z/ for cod. This qualitative scheme was
particularly popular among speech therapists and students of speech and drama.
i + reed
w rid
]+ cord
Z cod
The rivalry of these two widely used schemes was resolved by A.C. Gimson. Both in his own
works and in Jones’s EPD, which he took over as editor, he made use of a scheme that was both
quantitative and quantitative. It uses distinct letter-shapes for the different vowels, but also
retains length marks for the long vowels. So reed is written with /i:/, rid with /w/, cord with /
] :/, and cod with /Z/. The resulting scheme is admittedly somewhat redundant — but almost
all British phoneticians quickly rallied to it, and this quantitative-qualitative notation has become
a de facto standard.
All three types of transcription can be defended as conforming to IPA principles. All are equally
“scientific”. All convey the same information, equally unambiguously. The difference is in what
they make explicit and what they leave to be inferred. The quantitative-qualitative type, now
generally adopted, makes explicit both vowel length and vowel quality.
6. Vowels: the standard scheme
By 1990 the quantitative-qualitative transcription had been adopted by all the most influential
writers on phonetics in England, and by many general dictionaries. It is found, for example, in

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