User talk:PatriciaKeatingIPA

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This conversation continued here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Guillaume2303#edits_to_IPA_pages_by_IPA_Secretary Secretary of the IPA (talk) 22:10, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note to others: Yes, my username used to be "Secretary of the IPA", but now it's "PatriciaKeatingIPA". PatriciaKeatingIPA (talk) 01:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Official chart[edit]

Hi,

Posting my question here, as I don't know if you have the IPA article on your watch list.

Could I ask why the main chart is incomplete? It's not a chart of the pulmonic consonants, but only a subset of them, even excluding the doubly articulated consonants, which I understand would be difficult to include. Is it simply a matter of saving space by omitting rows and columns with few letters, so that the chart is more legible in the back of the Handbook? We've found that non-expert readers are confused by the official chart, believing for example that the epiglottals are not pulmonic consonants because they are not included in the pulmonic chart, or that [ʁ] can only be a fricative because it does not appear in the approximant row.

— kwami (talk) 18:18, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! (Yes, I do have the various IPA/JIPA pages on my watch list.) There are different reasons for different aspects of the arrangement of the chart, mostly about how it developed historically, and as you suggest, space considerations. In general, no new column would be added unless it included several manners; so places of articulation introduced later, as well as the multiple articulations, all went into "Other". It's true that, as it stands now, "Other symbols" would be better named "Other pulmonic consonants" - leaving aside the tie bars; but I suppose that when this category was introduced, it was thought that misc. vowels might also end up there. (Indeed there is some discussion of moving some of the vowel symbols off the vowel chart and into "Other".) But it's also important that the chart fit onto a single page, yes.

The question of voiced fricatives vs. approximants is quite a different one, and reflects, I think, the earlier theoretical basis of the consonants in general and the approximants in particular. For places where fricatives and approximants were not clearly in contrast in some language, and given the gradient distinction between these 2 degrees of stricture, the approximants could just be filled in, so to speak. I agree that this is not clear on the face of it, but the chart does require explanation of the sort that an intro textbook gives. I hope that this Wikipedia entry can be one more place where new students of phonetics can find such explanation. --- Secretary of the IPA (talk) 21:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. Thanks. I've meanwhile found an article by Esling where he said the alveolo-palatals are removed from the main chart for lack of space, but it's good to get confirmation that that was a reason. Your suggestions are of course welcome. I think a discussion of why the charts are arranged the way they are may be informative. Ours are set up to follow common lenition patterns, as well as keeping the components of most affricates adjacent, but of course there's no way to capture everything in two dimensions.

Oh, as for having trills above flaps, was that due to a judgement that trills are closer than flaps? Or did one just have to be above the other, and ⟨r⟩ is a basic Latin letter? — kwami (talk) 02:05, 8 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it's the former. Oral stricture is the vertical dimension to the extent possible. Secretary of the IPA (talk) 21:31, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the chart and text. I added it to the history article as well.

Do you have access to the first IPA chart? I believe it was 1900. We have some early charts, but they were rather variable in those days, and it would be nice to have the very first one for the history article. We could also really use the 1989 Kiel chart, what happened in 1996 (just the correction of *⟨ʚ⟩?), and clarification of whether changes were made in 1976, 1979, or both. (I found a 1979 chart, but refs say changes were made in 1976.)

Thanks, — kwami (talk) 20:46, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm off soon to a phonetics conference, but in August I will look into what charts our historians have available.

Sounds good. I've been limited to what I've been able to find online. — kwami (talk) 21:58, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I stitched together a 1989 chart from the 2005 chart you released, based on the inside covers of the 3rd ed. of A Course In Phonetics. So the blocks are as published, but not their arrangement on the page. (Not that that matters, but the chart is a bit longer than it would have been.) So we don't need that, which should save you the hassle of releasing the copyright.

If your historians have a copy of Sweet's Romic alphabet, that would be helpful too, as the ancestor of the IPA. As you can see from that article, I think I've worked out the vowels, though I'm not confident on all the IPA equivalents, but it's likely I'm missing some of the consonants. — kwami (talk) 23:41, 29 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, could your historians say what "bronchial" consonants were, back in the early days? They were supposedly produced with friction in the bronchial tubes. Might they have been pharyngeals or epiglottals? — kwami (talk) 00:04, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Please revisit your name change request[edit]

Click here, please. --Dweller (talk) 12:51, 14 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]