Ask-A-Linguist Message Details
| Subject: | Consistency-checking manual transcriptions |
|---|---|
| Question: |
For languages with no writing system or no very standardized writing system, are there any tools that support consistency- checking of manually created transcriptions? For example, I was reading a text in a grammar for an endangered language, and the writer had glossed and translated both uwE and iwE as ''2SG/you''; and I wasn't sure if that was intentional or a typo (iwE was much more frequent in the text than uwE). If not, how do linguists working with languages without standardized orthographies achieve transcription consistency, for approximately phonemic transcriptions? Thanks. |
| Reply: |
Writing systems develop out of spoken languages to represent speech sounds, ideally. In this sense, orthographies are a kind of transcription, though often inaccurate, as you point out. The International Phonetic Association (IPA) has created a standard phonetic alphabet, the International Phonetic Alphabet (also IPA), in order to represent speech sounds as accurately as possible. Each IPA symbol is meant to correspond one-to-one with a specific speech sound, and vice versa. Their website: <a href='http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/' target='_blank'>http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/</a>; Grammars of spoken languages, as I presume the language you mention is, include the grammar of their sounds – their phonology – in standard phonetic transcription. This is so we all know what we are talking about, just like we know what a construct like “2SG/you” means. For consistency across phonetic transcriptions, have a look at a previous Ask-a-Linguist question, here: <a href='http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details2.cfm?asklingid=200468106' target='_blank'>http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/message-details2.cfm?asklingid=200468106</a>; Madalena |
| Reply From: | Madalena Cruz-Ferreira click here to access email |
| Date: | 29-Aug-2012 |
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