Vowel transcription systems: An Australian perspective

Abstract

Transcription is an essential clinical tool for speech-language pathologists as it provides a permanent written record of communicative behaviour and forms an important source of data for analysis, interpretation, decision making, and dissemination. One of the responsibilities in speech-language pathology is to faithfully capture the speech production characteristics of clinical populations so that informed management decisions may be made. Notation systems that are appropriately suited for this purpose are mandatory. In Australia today, the conventional phonemic transcription system was first described over 60 years ago. However, an alternative to this traditional system has more recently been proposed by Harrington, Cox and Evans (HCE). This paper details the HCE system and argues its advantage as a clinical tool for speech-language pathologists in Australia. This new system provides a more accurate phonetically oriented foundation against which atypical vowel production can be assessed. It is further argued that the HCE system can form the basis for narrower phonetic examination and has pedagogical value in the description of Standard Australian English.

Keywords:

• Phonetics
• transcription
• vowels
• Australian English
• speech-language pathology

Notes

1. Speakers of present day Australian English fall into three major dialect subgroups: Standard Australian English, Aboriginal English and Ethnocultural Australian English varieties. Standard Australian English is the dominant dialect and is used by the vast majority of speakers.

2. Roach (2004) also comments on the need to modernize the conventions for transcribing RP.

3. The /hVd/ frame includes the 18 words heed, hid, head, had, hard, hud, hod, horde, hood, who'd, heard, hide, hade, hoyd, howd, hode, heered, haired. Australian English does not contain rhotic vowels.

4. The isolated words used in ANDOSL are heed, hid, head, had, hard, hud, hod, horde, who'd, hood, heard, hay, hide, hoist, how, hoe, hear, hair.

5. Data for males can be found in Cox (2006). The male and female data show the same pattern of relationships between monophthongs and the diphthong trajectories.