IPA Transcription Research Articles

Phonological variation and linguistic diversity in Bangladeshi dialects: An exploration of sound patterns and sociolinguistic significance

This paper explores how people in different parts of Bangladesh talk differently from each other. The study pays special attention to the unique sounds in their dialects compared to the standard Bangla language. The main goal of the research is to understand why these sounds change from one dialect to another. The researchers collected data from 70 participants coming from 20 regions of Bangladesh, who were fluent in their regional dialects and studied it carefully. By employing semi-structured interviews, IPA transcription, and thorough verification processes, this study ensures the accuracy and reliability of its findings and discussion, contributing valuable insights into the phonological diversity of Bangladeshi dialects and their socio-linguistic significance. The authors found 13 phonological variations or patterns among the dialects of different regions of Bangladesh. Each type of change is explained with clear examples to make it easier to understand. The research contributes significantly to the understanding of socio-linguistic diversity in Bangladesh by providing experimental evidence of phonological variation and its determinants. It also lays the groundwork for future research on dialects and their relationship with the standard language. This study will bring up a greater appreciation for Bangladesh’s linguistic diversity and encourage further research into language variation and change.

Калмыцкий словник в работе П. С. Палласа: графо-фонетический анализ гласных

Introduction. Quite a number of eighteenth-nineteenth century Kalmyk dictionaries have been subject to linguistic analysis. However, the Kalmyk word list in the major work by P. S. Pallas — despite being well known to the scientific community — was never analyzed, yet that was an earliest attempt to record Kalmyk vocabulary and contains decently precise spellings (closest to actual oral patterns), which makes it a unique lexicographic source. Goals. The study attempts a graphophonetic analysis of Kalmyk vowels from the dictionary of P. S. Pallas, and seeks to identify reflexes of such vowel graphemes. Materials. The paper focuses on the Kalmyk word list consisting of 531 units, some to repeat but differ in spelling. Results. The study has yielded some rows of vowel graphemic correspondences between entries contained in the Pallas Dictionary, lexemes of modern standard Kalmyk, the latter’s IPA transcriptions, and H. Nugteren’s proto-Mongolic reconstructions, which makes it possible to conduct a graphophonetic analysis of the mentioned Kalmyk word list. The latter analysis has resulted in a table introducing data on reflexes of regular vowels (i.e., three examples least). There are significant phonetic differences between graphemic patterns of the Pallas Dictionary and present-day Kalmyk lexemes, in most cases those are essentially systemic. The differences from the modern literary language are mainly derived from historical changes that have arisen in vowels and vowel complexes under the influence of certain phonetic processes. In the absolute beginning of a word and after a consonant in the first syllable, vowels experience few changes, the bulk of such transformations be observed in further syllables and relate to reduced positions.

Investigation of Development of Phonology using Artificial Intelligence: A Preliminary Study

Background: Investigation of the development of acquisition of phonological processes is a very important phenomenon to predict language development in childhood. Phonological development refers to the gradual acquisition of an adult-like speech system used to convey meaning in a language. Adequate phonological development can lead to higher speech intelligibility, essential for perception and speech production. The test battery approach for phonological assessment includes formal as well as informal testing modalities. Speech intelligibility is a vital parameter for the assessment of phonological development. This is done via scoring collected audio speech samples, followed by IPA transcription and scoring and analysis of data manually. The primary objective of the study was to investigate the speech intelligibility score across real-timed stimuli (rhyming, storytelling, open-ended questions, and picture description tasks) across two age categories, i.e., 3-4 and 4-5 years among 40 Hindi-speaking children. Methods: A total of 40 children (15 girls and 25 boys) in the age range of 3 to 5 years were randomly selected from a junior high school in New Delhi, India. Groupwise speech intelligibility score was calculated for rhyming, storytelling, open-ended questions, and picture description tasks. Results: It was observed that the speech intelligibility score for open-ended questions was significantly higher in the 4-5 years group (94.09 ± 3.7) than the 3-4 years (89.83 ± 8.2), t (1, 38) =2.12, p =0.04). However, no significant improvement in rhyming task [t (1, 38) =1.14, p =0.18), storytelling [t (1, 38) =1.81, p =0.07), and picture description [t (1, 38) =1.89, p =0.06) was observed. Conclusion: Chances of error in conventional method of phonology assessment still persists which may be controlled using Artificial Intelligence (AI). The target phonetic stimulus can be customized based on the linguistic experience and environment.

The Diverse Names Generator: An app for decreasing bias and promoting inclusion

It has been well established that example sentences in linguistics use a remarkably non-diverse set of proper names in terms of gender, culture, and ethnicity (e.g., Macaulay & Brice 1997, Cépeda et al. 2021, and Kotek et al. 2021). Here, we introduce a new resource, the Diverse Names Generator (DNG), which provides randomly selected proper names with IPA transcriptions from a user-contributed, linguist-curated database of names from a wide range of languages and cultures. Generating names randomly helps users to overcome unconscious bias that may lead them to default to using Anglophone, male-gendered names. The DNG can be accessed both through a website interface and through a downloadable Android app, both with offline capabilities. This novel resource is the first of its kind and can be used both while preparing examples ahead of time and while generating examples live in the classroom.

Lip posture of high and high-mid vowels in Hnaring Lutuv

Lutuv is an under-documented South Central Tibeto-Burman language which is reported to contain six high monophthongs /i, y, ɨ, ʉ, Ɯ, u/ and four diphthongal vowels with high onsets /ie̯, yə̯, uɔ̯, Ɯə̯/ (Bohnert etal., 2022). No articulatory work on Lutuv exists to date, but impressionistic observations suggest that while the contrast between /i, y/ and /u, Ɯ/ is one of rounding (as implied by their IPA transcriptions), the contrast between /ɨ, ʉ/ is instead one of lip spreading. In addition, /ʉ/ seems to involve a degree of frication from labiodental contact. To further investigate these observations, the current paper utilizes facial landmark recognition through OpenFace 2.0 (Baltrusaitis et al., 2018) to analyze the lip posture of these vowels, measuring horizontal, vertical, and lateral lip aperture over the duration of each vowel produced by one native speaker in a curated word list. These measurements are compared both within and across pairs to determine (1) the articulatory characteristics of Lutuv rounding contrasts, and (2) whether the central high vowels display these characteristics. These data complement existing acoustic analyses and provide a more detailed understanding of the articulation of a typologically rare contrast.

FREQUENCY OF OCCURRENCE OF PHONEMES IN HINDI

Hindi, an Indo-Aryan language is the national language of India and the state language of various North Indian states of India such as Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh etc. Statistics on the phonemes of a language provides useful information in the field of speech language pathology, audiology, linguistics and communication engineering. The data can be effectively used for the assessment and selection of target phonemes for treatment of various communication disorders, develop phonetically balanced word lists for audiological testing, and teach foreign language. It also provides valuable information to device text to speech systems and automatic speech recognition systems. The earlier data on frequently occurring phonemes in numerous Indian languages were derived from written sources. However, information from spoken language may be of more significance compared to written language. The aim of the present study was to determine the frequently occurring phonemes in spoken Hindi. Participants were native speakers of Hindi in the age range of 20 to 70 years. Eighteen group conversation samples were recorded. The samples were transcribed using IPA transcription. Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software was used to analyze the samples in order to obtain the frequently occurring phonemes. Descriptive statistics was applied for the same. Results revealed that phonemes /n, a, e, f, h, k/ were the most frequently occurring phonemesin Hindi. Aspirated phonemes (/gh/, /ʈh/, /ph/, /ɖh/) were the least present phonemes in the data. High and front vowels were more frequently present in spoken Hindi. Considering the manner of articulation, nasals and stops had higher occurrence. Alveolar dominated considering the place of articulation of phonemes. The applications of the study are extensive and can be utilized efficiently in a variety of disciplines.

FREQUENCY OF OCCURRENCE OF PHONEMES IN HINDI

Hindi, an Indo-Aryan language is the national language of India and the state language of various North Indian states of India such as Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh etc. Statistics on the phonemes of a language provides useful information in the field of speech language pathology, audiology, linguistics and communication engineering. The data can be effectively used for the assessment and selection of target phonemes for treatment of various communication disorders, develop phonetically balanced word lists for audiological testing, and teach foreign language. It also provides valuable information to device text to speech systems and automatic speech recognition systems. The earlier data on frequently occurring phonemes in numerous Indian languages were derived from written sources. However, information from spoken language may be of more significance compared to written language. The aim of the present study was to determine the frequently occurring phonemes in spoken Hindi. Participants were native speakers of Hindi in the age range of 20 to 70 years. Eighteen group conversation samples were recorded. The samples were transcribed using IPA transcription. Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software was used to analyze the samples in order to obtain the frequently occurring phonemes. Descriptive statistics was applied for the same. Results revealed that phonemes /n, a, e, f, h, k/ were the most frequently occurring phonemesin Hindi. Aspirated phonemes (/gh/, /ʈh/, /ph/, /ɖh/) were the least present phonemes in the data. High and front vowels were more frequently present in spoken Hindi. Considering the manner of articulation, nasals and stops had higher occurrence. Alveolar dominated considering the place of articulation of phonemes. The applications of the study are extensive and can be utilized efficiently in a variety of disciplines.

Arabic to English Translation Issues and Possibilities

This article aims to investigate the possibilities and issues in translation from Arabic to English and find out the possible solution for translation issues. Since translation is a susceptible and subtle task of language study, many issues must be addressed. However, translating from Arabic to English becomes more challenging. Thus, a translator should possess critical linguistic knowledge when dealing with language's surface and underlying aspects. Furthermore, translation involves the transfer of various characteristics from one language into another. Having Arabic and English as two distinct and distant scripts, translating from one into another poses many challenges, including difficulties with vocabulary, grammar, sound, style and usage. The present article provides a practical, possible, and acceptable way to solve the issues relating to translating Arabic texts into English, especially the language, based on the type of readership, the text, context, culture, etc. For the benefit of non-native users of the Arabic language, Arabic IPA transcriptions are provided wherever deemed necessary. Keywords: Translation, Possibilities, Usage, Culture, Meaning, Text DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/85-04 Publication date: January 31 st 2022

Multi-script morphological transducers and transcribers for seven Turkic languages

This paper describes ongoing work to augment morphological transducers for seven Turkic languages with support for multiple scripts each, as well as preliminary work adding IPA transcription systems. Evaluation demonstrates that our approach yields coverage equivalent to or not much lower than that of the base transducers.

Türkçede Bulunan Hint-Avrupa Dil Ailesine Ait Kelimelerin İngilizce Konuşan Türkler Tarafından İngilizce Telaffuzunda Sözcük Vurgusu Analizi

This study investigated lexical stress placement in English pronunciation of Indo-European words loaned to Turkish by Turkish speakers of English. We aimed to increase awareness of prosodic features since misusage of primary stress causes breakdowns in communication. The sample consists of 20 students in the ELT Department of a public university in Turkey and 10 native English speakers. The non-native speakers were divided into two groups for the purpose of observing the effect of treatment on lexical stress patterns of English. The participants were asked to read 30 tokens in isolation and in sentences while their speech were being recorded. The audio files were analyzed through Praat to determine where the participants placed primary stress. The accuracy of primary stress placement for each word was determined according to IPA transcriptions. The findings of the study revealed that there is a statistically significant difference in the accuracy of primary stress placement between native speakers and Turkish speakers of English. Negative L1 transfer was detected in the placement of lexical stress in the recordings of Turkish participants. The results showed that the participants receiving the treatment made significant progress. Furthermore, no statistically significant difference was found between isolated and in-sentence utterances. The findings of this study can serve as a tool for language teachers to create materials and effective resources that eliminate these difficulties for NNSs at any level of language education.

ECEP: historical corpora, historical phonology and historical pronouncing dictionaries

This article presents theEighteenth-Century English Phonology Database(ECEP) in the context of historical phonology and historical corpora. The eighteenth century witnessed the proliferation of works on elocution and orthoepy and yet the field lacks searchable digital sources comparable to those available in other disciplines like historical syntax or historical pragmatics. Because of this and for other reasons such as the difficulty in deciphering idiosyncratic notation systems in the original materials, there has been a certain disregard for the study of eighteenth-century phonological evidence. The ECEP database aims to redress this absence of research material by collecting data from eighteenth-century pronouncing dictionaries in the form of IPA transcriptions (c.1,600 different example words totallingc.17,600 transcriptions) and supplementary metadata, with a view to facilitating systematic analyses of phonological, chronological and geographic patterns, and also normative attitudes. The richness of the contents in ECEP will thus be of interest to phonologists, dialectologists and language variationists from the historical as well as the synchronic perspective, in that eighteenth-century orthoepists laid the ground for what became ‘Received Pronunciation’. Methodologically, the compilation of the ECEP database aims to contribute to the thriving field of corpus linguistics with a new research tool for the study of the history of English.

Vowel Perception and Transcription Trainer for Learners of English as a Foreign Language

We use the freely available program Praat to create a vowel-training application for learners of English familiar with IPA transcription. The application is easy to operate, allowing users to change the training difficulty, providing the listeners with immediate feedback, and adapting to their performance during a training session. To evaluate the effectiveness of the Trainer, performance of 59 Czech learners during a single training session and across multiple sessions was tracked. Results showed improvement both between sessions and within sessions. In the final training session, vowel identification accuracy showed considerable resistance to gradual addition of increasing levels of noise. Testing the trainer with additional 52 learners showed significantly higher error-rates for low-frequency words and supported the importance of top-down lexical effect in vowel identification.

An Analysis of Arabic-English Translation: Problems and Prospects

This research paper is designed with a view to looking into various problems of translating Arabic texts into English and fixing them with prospective and suitable solutions. As translation is a very sensitive and subtle task of language studies, it involves some serious issues to deal with. However, it becomes a more complex task when we translate from Arabic to English. So, a translator must have the critical linguistic knowledge in tackling both the surface and underlying relations of language. Translation also entails the transferring and transforming a variety of characteristic elements from one language into the other. As Arabic and English are of different and distant origins, any translation from one script into the other poses a lot of difficulties such as in the areas of vocabulary, grammar, sound, style and usage. The present paper addresses the problems relating to translating the Arabic texts, specially of the language, into English as well as resolving the obstructions in a practical, possible and acceptable way on the bases of types of readership, text, context, culture and so forth. To make this work more accessible to the non-native users of the Arabic language, Arabic IPA transcriptions are furnished wherever necessary.

The position of the tongue root in the articulation of posterior sibilants in Polish

Standard Polish has a typologically relatively rare contrast between “hard” post-alveolar affricates and fricatives, transcribed by Ladefoged and Disner (2012) as (/tṣ, dẓ, ṣ, ẓ/ and “soft” alveolo-palatal affricates and fricatives (IPA transcription /tɕ, dʑ, ɕ, ʑ /). The hard post-alveolars are notoriously ambiguous—phonetically they are neither sense stricto retroflexes (though some authors adopt such an analysis based on phonological arguments, e.g., Hamann 2003) nor typical palatoalveolars. Additionally, the “hard” post-alveoalars can be allophonically palatalized in the context of [i]. Multiple approaches have been proposed to differentiate the hard and soft series, all of them primarily focusing on the shape of the body of the tongue, including the level of raising of the body of the tongue, the place of articulation, and the length of the constriction. In this study, we present 3-D tongue shapes of the consonants. The 3D ultrasound images—besides additional details of the shape of the tongue body—reveal a consistent difference in terms of the tongue root position, with a fronting of the tongue root and a pronounced groove along the center of the tongue in the root part of the tongue for prepalatals and no such fronting for the “hard” post-alveolars.Standard Polish has a typologically relatively rare contrast between “hard” post-alveolar affricates and fricatives, transcribed by Ladefoged and Disner (2012) as (/tṣ, dẓ, ṣ, ẓ/ and “soft” alveolo-palatal affricates and fricatives (IPA transcription /tɕ, dʑ, ɕ, ʑ /). The hard post-alveolars are notoriously ambiguous—phonetically they are neither sense stricto retroflexes (though some authors adopt such an analysis based on phonological arguments, e.g., Hamann 2003) nor typical palatoalveolars. Additionally, the “hard” post-alveoalars can be allophonically palatalized in the context of [i]. Multiple approaches have been proposed to differentiate the hard and soft series, all of them primarily focusing on the shape of the body of the tongue, including the level of raising of the body of the tongue, the place of articulation, and the length of the constriction. In this study, we present 3-D tongue shapes of the consonants. The 3D ultrasound images—besides additional details of the shape of the tongue body—r...

‘Proper’ pro-nun-ʃha-ʃhun1 in Eighteenth-Century English: ECEP as a New Tool for the Study of Historical Phonology and Dialectology

English historical linguists have often complained about the scholarly neglect of the phonology of the Late Modern English period; yet, the value of pronouncing dictionaries as rich and reliable evidence has been demonstrated (Beal, J. C., 1999, English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Spence’s Grand Repository of the English Language (1775). Oxford: Clarendon Press; Jones, C., 2006, English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). This article presents a new electronic, searchable database of ‘Eighteenth-Century English Phonology’ (ECEP) which aims to facilitate research on the social, regional, and lexical distribution of phonological variants in 18th-century English, as documented in contemporary pronouncing dictionaries. Taking Wells’ (1982, Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) lexical sets for the vowel system of present-day varieties of English as its reference, the database provides unicode IPA transcriptions for the relevant segment of each word given as an example of lexical (sub)set in his account of standard lexical sets, to which we have added some complementary consonant sets. These will be of use for comparative studies with 19th-century and present-day English. First, we describe the methodology and contents of ECEP: primary source selection, data input and annotation, the web-based interface. Second, we report on two case studies that demonstrate the value of evidence that can be systematically extracted from ECEP for the analysis of segmental and suprasegmental phonology; these are variations in the pronunciation of ‘wh’ in the set whale (/hw/∼/w/∼/h/), and the palatalization of alveolar consonants before /uː/. Thus, this article will demonstrate the viability of ECEP for historical phonology, dialectology, and sociolinguistics, and will help to promote the use of databases as key resources in historical linguistics.

Nasreddin Hodja tales may inspire Turkish foreign language gifted and talented students to speak better English

This study deals with a special methodology to meet the special needs of Turkish gifted and talented students (GTS) in terms of improving their English oral proficiency. Most GTS are known to have been born also “gifted in languages”. Their language awareness shows by their “communicative skills, creative flair and arguing and reasoning”. Their skill in using their native language reflect in their talents in foreign languages by their “strong desire to put language pieces together by themselves, by their creativity and imagination, picking up new words and structures very quickly, constantly asking questions and showing an intense interest in the cultural features of the new language they are learning.” So benefitting from these talents they could easily be oriented to fine-tune their pronunciation and intonation in acceptable norms of phonetics. Turkish GTS having greater ease in learning new skills than their peers and are not usually satisfied with the usual methods and curriculum which do not fit to their vision of perfection at their own pace. The official foreign language training they are offered lacks the method by which they can learn to speak clearly and effectively, which is a skill they need to acquire in order to communicate orally with the rest of the world. Therefore they must be trained in new approaches to bring their proficiency on that line up to higher standards. In order to compensate this vital gap, such GTS need to learn first a special technique called “IPA transcription reading” and practice on relevant materials. In this innovative approach, students first acquire an awareness of the individual sounds and speech rhythm of the target language, i.e. English and practice on them by reading aloud texts written in IPA codes accompanied by their sound recordings and have their performance monitored by their speech instructions until perfection is reached. As for the drilling material to be chosen humor has been found great advantage, as it makes learning easier. The best known Turkish philosopher Nasreddin Hodja’s satirical tales, traditionally a great source of inspiration for Turks, has been considered as a great source for such activities. By working hard on the transcriptions Hodja tales, students find not only to express themselves in English more clearly, understandably and fluently, their audience but also their conversation became wiser and more humourous. Because a sense of humor in conversation makes both speakers and listeners feel better as it smoothes out their interactions as a social lubricant. Those GTS grasping the correct norms of English pronunciation after much drilling on transcription are expected to speak English more efficiently and confidently than earlier and than their peers not undergone such training. The desired outcome will of course be achieved through constant practice and monitoring their performances

When is an /r/ not an /r/?

These notes are largely based on Lodge (2009), and the IPA transcriptions on Wells (2000).Michael Bulley has singled out for discussion one variant in the articulation of the /r/ phoneme in British English which he characterises as ‘w-for-r’, ‘close to /w/, but distinct from it’ (Bulley, 2014: 46). The focus is on /r/ in syllable-initial position, including /r/ in initial consonant clusters. He describes this particular, not to say singular, variant as ‘/w/-like’, which begs a number of questions.

Efficacy in phonetics training for the actor

This paper explores the impact of early introduction of keywords for sound/symbol memorization, teaching the complete repertoire of IPA symbols, IPA transcription of recorded audio, and the efficacy of several experimental teaching techniques in speech training for the actor. The paper is the result of a research study that tested the eight recommendations for phonetics instruction for actors outlined by Phil Thompson. The study gathered data from two focus groups of second-year graduate-level acting students after a year of introductory phonetics, taught within a voice class in a conservatory setting, to explore effective outcomes as well as student self-perception of the effectiveness of Thompson’s recommendations. The paper suggests that existing curricula can be bolstered by implementing aspects of Thompson’s new, rigorous approach, while interrogating both its effectiveness and appropriateness.

Text To Speech for Marathi Language using Transcriptions Theory

research paper presents the approach towards converting text to speech using new methodology. The text to speech conversion system enables user to enter text in Marathi and as output it gets sound. The paper presents the steps followed for converting text to speech for Marathi language and the algorithm used for it. The focus of this paper is based on the tokenisation process and the orthographic representation of the text that shows the mapping of letter to sound using the description of language's phonetics. Here the main focus is on the text to IPA transcription concept. It is in fact, a system that translates text to IPA transcription which is the primary stage for text to speech conversion. The whole procedure for converting text to speech involves a great deal of time as it's not an easy task and requires efforts. KeywordsOrthographic representation, phonetic, tokenization, transcription.

Introducing the IPA Symbols for English Consonant Phonemes to Bengali Learners of English and the Ensuing Challenges

Despite learning English as a compulsory subject for twelve years, Bangladeshi adult students can hardly communicate orally because of their pronunciation being very faulty. The exams never test the examinees’ ability to speak, resulting in widespread negligence towards pronunciation. If these learners ever approach the International Phonetic Alphabet as an attempt to develop a self-correcting mechanism, they show some particular tendencies. This study was carried out to determine the extent to which Bengali speaking Bangladeshi learners of English depend on English letters to read English words in IPA transcription. It also aimed to establish a hierarchy of the symbols in terms of the learners’ difficulty to master them. By employing an experimental research design as well as a questionnaire survey it was revealed that learners heavily rely on their knowledge of English letters while reading English words in transcription. It was also found out that all the IPA symbols for English consonant phonemes are not equally difficult for them to master: there is a clear hierarchy of difficulty.