New CBB

Okay, when I do my homework and figure out what this means, I will fix it. [/grinning]

Phonetics go in the slashes, so that's where your IPA goes. Don't worry about the phonemics, that's an after thought. And the orthography, the way you write the words using Latin or whatever other alphabet goes in the angled brackets.

So the sounds go /hi:ɹ/, the writing goes <here>.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

Thanks.

Er, hold up.

Phonemic (i.e., broad) transcription goes between /slashes/.

Phonetic (i.e., narrow) transcription goes between [brackets].

Orthographic transcription, as you say, goes between <angle brackets>.

It sounds like you have it right (given that phonemics, the stuff between slashes, is what you typically do first, and the phonetics, the stuff between brackets, comes later), you're just mixing up the terms for phonetic (which means a narrow, mechanical analysis) and phonemic (which means a broad, phonological analysis)?

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

Oops. What he said.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

I'm a little fuzzy.

So phonemes are the actual sounds, and phonetics is how they are pronounced (for lack of a better term). Would allophony be phonetics?

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Yes

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Dotjen
Kotanese

Sort of...but that's a kind of odd way to put it.

You can think of it this way:

Phones (phonetics) are concrete, while phonemes (phonemics) are abstract.

Phones are what you say, phonemes are what you hear.

A phone can be described objectively in terms of what speakers are doing mechanically to produce the sound.

Phonemes cannot be described objectively, because they only make sense in the context of a particular language's sound system. So, the English /p/ phoneme is by no means the same thing as the Mandarin /p/ phoneme, but [pʰ] refers to the same sound whether you're talking about English, Mandarin, or any other language.

The reason a phonemic transcription is called "broad" and a phonetic transcription is called "narrow" is because phonetic transcriptions must include way more detail than phonemic transcriptions do, because they have to describe the fine details of everything the speaker is doing when they pronounce something. Phonemic transcriptions, on the other hand, only have to mark whatever constitute distinctive features in the language's phonology.


Note for yeps: Once again, don't worry about this stuff at the moment unless you find it really interesting. Designing the allophony/phonetic system of your language is a more advanced step that you can totally put off until later.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

A phone is also a device that allows one to talk to another over great distance...

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Dotjen
Kotanese

True, but you should not typically store that type of phone in brackets. Or slashes, for that matter.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

Concerning 'phonological' vs 'phonetic' transcriptions.

We can look at a concrete example. You say that all your consonants are voiced.

We could have, say, words like /badag/, /vebez/ and /golov/.

Suppose then, that we added a rule, saying that consonants became devoiced if they come at the end of words. The word above would then be pronounced [badak], [vebes] and [golof] respectively.

But note that [k], [s] and [f] would not be phonemes in the language. You could have two words that were identical, except that one had a [k] and the other had a [g] in it. You could not contrast, say, /badak/ and /badag/. The voiceless sounds - [p], [t], [k] [s] etc, only occur at the end of words. Everywhere else, you could only have the corresponding voiced sounds [b], [d], [g], [z] etc. And these voiced sounds cannot occur at the end of words. At the end of words, we must use the voiceles sounds - [p], [t] [k], [s] etc.

We could use /badag/, /vebez/ and /golov/ as phonemic transcriptions, and [badak], [vebes] and [golof] as phonetic transcriptions.

We say that voiced ([b], [d] etc.) and their corresponding voiceless sounds ([p], [t], etc.) are in complementary distribution.

On a 'deep' level, [p] [t] and [s] are 'really' /b/ /d/ and /z/.

Thus, among the consonants, their is one set of phonemes - /b/, /d/, /g/, etc. But each phoneme has two realisations or allophones:
-A voiceless allophone - [p], [t], [k] etc. that is used word-finally.
-A voiced allophone that is used everywhere else.

It may also be the case, that one phoneme has two or more pronunciations, that are in free variation. Suppose there is a general rule, that voiced consonants become voiceless at the end of words. This may work fine for consonants like /t/ or k/ or /s/. But some people may find it difficult to pronounce /n/ without voicing. There are languages that have voiceless /n/ (the voicelessness in indicated with a little ring in IPA, /n̥/ or /n̊/), but that's not very common. Perhaps some people will devoice word-final /n/ in your language, other won't. Yet others may switch between the two pronunciations. They may sometimes pronounce /n/ as [n], and sometimes as [n̥]. We say that [n] and [n̥] are in free variation.


To sum up: Two different sounds in your language - say [s] and [z] - could:

(1) be allophones of the same phoneme. On a 'deeper' level, they are the same sounds. There are rules in the language for when it's pronounced [s], and when it's pronounced [z]. You could not have two words, that were distinguished only in that one had an [s] and the other had a [s].

(2) be in free variation. Speakers may vary between [s] and [z]. As above, the two would in a sense be 'the same sound' on a 'deeper' level. But there would be no rules for when it's pronounced [s], and when it's pronounced [z]; it's up to the speaker. As above, you could not have two words, that were distinguished only in that one had an [s] and the other had a [s].

(3) belong to separate phonemes. They are 'different sounds' on a 'deeper level' in the languages. There are no rules for how to calculate when there should be an [s] and when there should be a [z]. Often (but not necessarily*) different phonemes could be used to form different words - say /kas/ and /kaz/. A pair of words, that are distinguished by a simple sound, is called a minimal pairs. That we have minimal pairs such as /kas/ and /kaz/ shows that /s/ and /z/ are different phonemes.




*I say not necessarily. There are some phonemes that *typically* occur at the beginning of words - like /h/ - and others that *typically* occur only at the end of, or in the middle of words - like the velar nasal /ŋ/. If this is the case - we could not have two words, that were distinguished only in that the one word had /h/ where the other had /ŋ/. We would still not say that /h/ and /ŋ/ were allophones of the same phoneme. The reason is that /h/ and /ŋ/ are too different. It's not plausible to say that they constitute 'the same sound' on a 'deeper' level. Two regard to sounds as allophones of the same phoneme, we must show that the different pronunciations are due to some plausible rules, causing the same underlying sound to sound differently in different environments. Normally, it would not be plausible to regard [h] and [ŋ] as 'the same sound' in this way.

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constructedlanguages.net

All right. Let me see if I got that.

Phones are how the mouth is shaped for the sound.
Phonetics is how the sound comes across, like voiced/unvoiced, aspirated/unaspirated, etc.
So if I had a final devoicing rule, I would say "Badog is pronounced [badok]" not "Badog is pronounced /badok/"

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The statement highlighted above isn't technically correct, since voicing and aspiration distinctions can also be made on the phonemic level, depending on the language in question.

phonemes : phonemics : / / - These are sounds as perceived by the speaker before they are uttered. An English phoneme would be /t/.
phones : phonetics : [ ] - Sounds as they actually come out. The phonetic realization of a phoneme may be conditioned by its location in a word and by allophonic rules. So English /t/

/t/ > [+aspirated] / #_
/t/ > [t] / s_
/t/ > [ɾ] / intervocalically
etc..

For example the word <teal>, phonemically it would be /til/, but it is actually realized phonetically as [tʰiɫ] (depending on your dialect, of course).

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flags

Phones are speech sounds, like [kʰ], [ð], [æ], [ʉ], [ǂʰ], [ʤ] etc. Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.

Phonemes are those speech sounds that are contrastive in a given languages. Phonology is the study of phonemes.

[p] and [pʰ] are different phones. Both [p] and [pʰ] occur in English. But - in English - they do not contrast, they are not separate phonemes. You can't have two words, that are identical in all respect, except that one word had a [p] whole the other had a [pʰ]. In English, there are rules for when to use [p] and when to use [pʰ]. Compare the words pin and spin. Most English dialects pronounce them like [pʰɪn] and [spɪn] (or something close thereto). Look also at pair of words like pan and span, can and scan, tone and stone [pʰæn] vs [spæn], [kʰæn] vs [skæn], [tʰəʊn] vs [stəʊn]. In English, plosives are aspirated in syllable onset, except when there is a preceding [s]. You can't have a words like [spʰɪn] or [pɪn] in English.

In a language where [pʰ] and [p] were different phonemes - /pʰ/ and /p/ - there could be minimal pairs like /pʰɪn/ and /pɪn/ - that were identical in every respect, except that the one had an aspirated stop, and the other had an unaspirated stop.

Another way to express the idea is to say that two phones or speech sound belongs to the same phoneme in a given language, if they, from that languages point of view, may be regarded as varieties of the same sound. Thus we could say, that [pʰ] and [p] are not really different sounds in English, but rather varieties of the same sound. In other languages, [pʰ] and [p] may be regarded as different sounds. In linguistic terminology, we say that the two are different phonemes - /pʰ/ and /p/. In English, we can also see that /p/ and /b/ are "different sound" - or in linguistic terminology - different phonemes. Yet in other languages, the two may be more like varieties of the same sound - [p] and [b].

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