LINGUIST List 6.100

Wed 25 Jan 11005

Sum: IPA history & haceks, American stereotyping of foreign lgs

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1. Joseph P Stemberger, SUMMARY: IPA history & haceks
2. Edith A Moravcsik, American stereotyping of foreign languages

Two weeks ago, I made an inquiry about how differences between
North American and IPA transcription systems developed, with
particular reference to why the IPA does not use the hacek-series
for palatoalveolar consonants, but instead uses the made-up characters
long-s (instead of s-hacek) and yogh (instead of z-hacek).

I'd like to thank all those who responded. I think this list is complete,
but if not, I apologize to anyone that I inadvertently left out:

 Lance Eccles (Lance.Ecclesmq.edu.au)
 Jane A. Edwards (edwardscogsci.Berkeley.EDU)
 Paul Fallon (pfallons850.mwc.edu)
 FRANKE INGOLF (FRAN2801pcmail.uni-trier.de)
 Michael Job (jobPapin.HRZ.Uni-Marburg.DE)
 Michael Kac (kaccs.umn.edu)
 Fred Karlsson (fkarlssoling.helsinki.fi)
 Peter Ladefoged (IDU0PNLMVS.OAC.UCLA.EDU)
 Nigel Love (NLOVEbeattie.uct.ac.za)
 Geoffrey S. Nathan (geoffnsiu.edu)
 Henry Rogers (rogersepas.utoronto.ca)
 Anton Sherwood (dashernetcom.com)
 Frits Stuurman (stuurmanMIT.EDU)
 Alfredo Torrejon (torrealmail.auburn.edu)
 Larry Trask (larrytcogs.susx.ac.uk)
 Allan C Wechsler (Wechslerworld.std.com)

The following references were provided:

International Phonetic Association. 1949. The principles of the
 International Phonetic Association. London: International
 Phonetic Association. [Reprinted in 1984].

 )>This provides the basic principles of the IPA, but no details
 )>about how particular choices were made.

Pullum, Geoffrey K. and William A. Ladusaw. 1986. Phonetic
 Symbol Guide.Chicago UP, Chicago.

 )>This has some interesting discussion of how some choices
 )>were made, & I'll discuss below the hacek question.

And additional references that I haven't looked up yet:

Albright, R. W. 1958. The International PHonetic Alphabet. IJAL
 Publication 7, Indian U. Research Center in Anthropology,
 Folklore, and Linguistics. Bloomington.

Pitman, James and John St. John. 1969. Alphabets and reading. New
 York: Pitman Publishing.

Lautzeichen und ihre Anwendung in verschiedenen Sprachgebieten. Von
 Fachgelehrten zusammengestellt unter Schriftleitung von
 Martin Heepe. Nachdruck mit einem einleitenden Kapitel
 herausgegeben von Elmar Ternes. Forum Phoneticum 27. Helmut
 Buske Verlag Hamburg. 1983.

Hention, Caroline (1988). "Individual symbols and diacritics",
 Journal of the International Phonetic Association 18.85-94.

Now, as for the hacek question.

Pullum & Ladusaw report that the hacek-series seems to have been adopted
by North Americans explicitly because it was easy to adapt to typing,
which has been an explicit concern of North American linguists for most
of the 20th Century, but NOT a concern of the IPA. In contrast, the IPA
has a basic principle that diacritics should be avoided for basic
phonemic contrasts, unless using a diacritic allows us to avoid making
a whole new series of symbols (such as aspiration in stops, nasalization
in vowels, dentals vs. alveolars, etc.). Since the hacek is a diacritic,
it was avoided, and so the long-s and yogh symbols were pressed into
service.

This explanation of the IPA avoidance of the hacek series is pretty
weak, in my opinion, on several counts.

First, the IPA has never consistently avoided diacritics, as with the
clause about using diacritics if they allow us to avoid a whole series
of new symbols. In practice, the IPA has been VERY inconsistent. For
reasons of tradition WITHIN WESTERN EUROPEAN ROMAN-BASED ORTHOGRAPHIC
SYSTEMS, separate symbols are used for voiceless vs. voiced obstruents,
but diacritics are used for aspirated, breathy voiced, and laryngealized
obstruents. A diacritic is used for ejectives, but a new series of
symbols was created for implosives. Dentals are distinguished from
alveolars via a diacritic, but retroflexes are given a series of new
symbols. In fact, use of diacritic vs. symbol, at least in the current
IPA is a haphazard affair, and one which is difficult to justify on
any grounds other than tradition.

Second, it's not totally clear that the hacek is a diacritic. Until
2 weeks ago, it had never occurred to me. I thought that the hacek
was a part of the base character (much as the hooks of the IPA retroflex
series, angma, etc., are a part of the base character). Perhaps this
partly derives from the fact that I learned these characters first as
letters in Slavic languages. I tell my students that s-hacek, z-hacek,
and c-hacek are traditional letters (and illustrate them with my first
name (z-hacek), my last name (s-hacek), and my grandmother's name
(c-hacek)). I tell them that j-hacek was created by analogy. No student
has ever found this odd, though of course using a diacritic by analogy
would be strange.

And I don't think that it's just me. This "diacritic" is never explicitly
defined anywhere (making it unique among diacritics). It is limited to
EXACTLY four characters: s-hacek, z-hacek, c-hacek, j-hacek. Suppose
that we assume that this "diacritic" means "palatoalveolar". That means
that it should be usable for marking allophonic palatoalveolarness,
in e.g. the /n/ in STRANGE and the /l/ in FILCH. But I've never seen
that; & if anyone wrote them that way, I doubt that anyone would
understand it. Further, some North Americans have actually used a "wedge"
diacritic (identical in form to the hacek) to denote a flap/tap: so
Smalley (1973: Manual of Articulatory Phonetics) uses n-wedge for an
alveolar nasal tap --- even though c-wedge is a palatoalveolar affricate.
Clearly, Smalley & others did not view the hacek as a diacritic, but a
part of the basic character.

I think that the real reason lies elsewhere. Several respondents noted
that the IPA was guided especially by Western Europeans. And since
Western European languages do not have any native symbols that uniquely
denote palatoalveolars, they created new ones. Slavic languages, found
only in Eastern Europe, were simply not considered an interesting source
for symbols for the IPA. I have always wondered whether there this was
an actively racist decision, based on widespread Western European
prejudices against Slavs (especially rampant & overt at the time at
which the IPA was originally set). Peter Ladefoged doubts that this
was the case: "I don't know of any early discussions that could be
called racist. Passy and other founders of the IPA were markedly
left-wing." It appears that things were more subtle: The Western
Europeans who adopted the IPA did not actively reject the Slavic
characters, so much as ignore them. I find it EXTREMELY unlikely that
the current IPA symbols would have been adopted had the hacek-series
been standard orthographic symbols for palatoalveolars in English,
French, and German. I also find it unlikely that Slavic members of
the International Phonetic Association are opposed to changing the
symbols to the hacek-series.

In his e-mail message, Peter Ladefoged mentioned another dimension to
this issue: "40 years ago there was more an anti-American feeling. In
Europe, where phonetics was very firmly established with chairs of
phonetics, etc, as opposed to America where there was not a single
person with the title Professor of Phonetics, use of hacek was viewed
as just another case of isolationist America refusing to accept
international conventions. I suspect that some of that is still
there, accounting for the recent IPA vote against the use of hacek."
This WesternEuropean vs. NorthAmerican divide is, of course, widespread
on both sides of the Atlantic. I would like to note that North American
practice is ALSO international, since Canadians tend to follow U.S.
practice. We have a clash of two opposing INTERNATIONAL conventions,
and whether it is North Americans or Western Europeans who should be
viewed as recalcitrant or provincial is not an easily answered question.

Well, that was a long message! But it summarizes what I've been able
to find out. And my own opinions, of course. As far as I can tell,
there is not now, and never has been, any principled reason why the
IPA does not use the hacek-series. The IPA adopted long-s and yogh
because the hacek-series was not a part of WESTERN EUROPEAN tradition.
The International Phonetic Association refuses to adopt the hacek
series out of a sense of tradition ("we've never used them") and,
probably, annoyance with North Americans for insisting on using them.

It would be nice if Western Europeans and North Americans could get
together & adopt a joint standard. We North Americans have, over the
decades, drifted towards IPA usage for many symbols. But we are
unwilling to give up the hacek-series, our retroflex symbols, and our
symbol for the palatal nasal. With some compromises, drawing symbols
from both continents, we could end the current confusion of multiple
transcription practices. But BOTH SIDES need to compromise. Until then,
perhaps we should rename the IPA so that its name more accurately
reflects its status: WERPA, the Western European Roman Phonetic Alphabet.

Incitefully (though perhaps NOT insightfully),
---Joe Stemberger
 University of Minnesota

A couple of months ago, I posted a call for literature on American
stereotyping of foreign languages on behalf of Sally Keyel, a student
at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who is not on e-mail. Here
is her response.

In regard to my request for literature about American stereotyping of
foreign languages (how Americans portray Indians and Asian people
speaking), there was some interest expressed in the responses. These were
the suggested items:
 - Elizabeth Traugott's _Linguistics for students of literature_
 - some books from the l930-s and l940-s with titles like _Handbook
 of dialects_ (which would have been very interesting but I could
 not find them)
 - a paper by Larry Rosenwald entitled "American literature and
 multilingual America"
 - a paper by Brian Joseph, Rich Janda, and Neil Jacobs on "hyperforeigni-
 zation"
 - Richard Bailey's _Images of English_
 - Julie Tetel Andresen's _Linguistics in America_
 - Peter Muelhausler's "Stereotype foreigner talk in German literature"
 (in Joshua Fishman et al, eds., _The Fergusonian impact_, volume 2:
 _Sociolinguistics and the sociology of language_);
 - "Speech pattern ratings for unintelligibility, accentedness, and
 avoidance" by Joann Fokes and Z.S. Bond at Ohio University

Thank you to everyone who responded!

Sally Keyel
Department of Linguistics
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee