History of the IPA

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The International Phonetic Alphabet
History
Nonstandard symbols
Extended IPA
Naming conventions
IPA for English

The history of the International Phonetic Alphabet and the International Phonetic Association began in the late 19th century, at the formation of the association and its declaration of creating a phonetic system used for describing the sounds of spoken language. The association was formed by French and British language teachers (led by Paul Passy) and established in Paris in 1886 (both the organisation and the phonetic script are best known as IPA). The first official version of the alphabet appears in Passy (1888). These teachers based the IPA upon the Romic alphabet of Henry Sweet (1880–1881, 1971), which was formed from the Phonotypic Alphabet of Isaac Pitman and Alexander John Ellis (Kelly 1981).

The alphabet has undergone a number of revisions during its history, including some major ones codified by the IPA Kiel Convention (1989); the most recent revision was in 1993, updated again in 1996. The extIPA was first created in 1991, revised to 1997; the VoQS (Voice Quality Symbols) was proposed in 1995 to provide a system for more detailed transcription of voice production (Ball et al. 1995).

1 History
2 Formation of Aims and Goals
3 Diacritics and Suprasegmentals
4 1900 Revision
5 1932 Revision
6 1989 Revision
7 1993 Revision
8 References

[edit] History

The International Phonetic Association was founded in Paris in 1886 under the name Dhi Fonètik Tîcerz' Asóciécon (The Phonetic Teachers' Association), a development of L'Association Phonétique des Professeurs d'Anglais (The English Teachers' Phonetic Association), to create an international phonetic alphabet. The sources for many of the symbols was Henry Sweet's Revised Romic system, which was in turn based on Pitman and Alexander Ellis's Phonotypic Alphabet. Several of the symbols, such as [ŋ] and [ʇ], had been used since the early 17th century.

The original intention of the association was to create a set of phonetic symbols which would have different phonetic values from language to language. However, over time this idea shifted to the formation of a single alphabet in which all symbols had a single prounciation. In 1887, the first draft of the alphabet was published, and was as follows:

Note: this early version of the IPA was presented as a list (with examples from European languages) instead of the now common articulatory chart used today.

	Blab.		Ldent.		Dent.		Alv.		Palv.		Pal.	Velar		Uvular	Glot.
Plosive	p	b					t	d				k	g		'
Nasal	m						n				ɴ	ɴ
Lateral							l				ʎ
Rhotic							r							ʀ
Semivowel	w	ɥ	U								j
Fricative			f	v	θ	ð	s	z	c	ʒ	ç	x	q		h

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i • y		u
Close-mid	e • ɶ		o
		ə
Open-mid	ɛ • œ		ɔ
	æ
Open	a		A

[edit] Formation of Aims and Goals

By September of 1888, a set of six policy statements had been formulated by the International Phonetic Association which would govern all future development of the alphabet. They were:

Each sign should have its own distinctive sound.
The same sign should be used for the same sound across all languages.
As many ordinary roman letters should be used as possible, and the usage of new letters should be minimal.
International usage should decide the sound of each sign.
The look of the new letters should suggest the sound that they represent.
Diacritics should be avoided when possible, as they are difficult to write and hard to see.

Aside from these six guidelines, the association encouraged phonemic-style transcription and for contributors to transcribe their own style of speaking their own language.

[edit] Diacritics and Suprasegmentals

Below is a chart of the earliest forms of diacritics and suprasegmentals in the IPA.

hl, lh	voiceless l
u:	long u
ã	nasal a
û	long and narrow u
-u, u-	weak stressed u
·u, u·, ù	strong stressed u

In the 1890s, more symbols were added which would aid in identifying phonemic and prosodic features of languages. This was done to facilitate the transcription of non-European languages, which did not easily fit into the basic sounds of the roman alphabet.

[edit] 1900 Revision

		Laryn- gales	Gutturales	Uvulaires	Vélaires	Palatales	Linguales	Labiales
C O N S O N N E S	Plosives	ʔ		q ɢ	k ɡ	c ɟ	t d	p b
	Nasales				ŋ	ɲ	n	m
	Latérales				ɫ	ʎ	l
	Roulées		Q	ᴙ ʀ			r
	Fricatives	h	ʜ ɦ	ᴚ ʁ	(ʍ w) x ǥ	(ɥ) ç j	ɹ, θ; ð, ʃ ʒ, s z, * *	f v F ʋ ʍ w ɥ
V O Y E L L E S	Fermées Mi-fermées Moyennes Mi-ouvertes Ouvertes				u ɯ ü ï y i ɷ ʏ ɩ o ∀ ö ë ø e ə; ɔ ʌ ɔ̈ ä œ ɛ ɐ æ ɑ a			(u ü y) (o ö ø) (ɔ ɔ̈ œ)

* no Unicode character (?)

[edit] 1932 Revision

	Bi-labial		Labio- dental	Dental and Alveolar			Retroflex	Palato- alveolar	Alveolo- palatal	Palatal				Velar						Uvular	Pharyngal [sic]	Glottal
Plosive	p b			t d			ʈ ɖ			c ɟ				k g						q ɢ		ʔ
Nasal	m		ɱ	n			ɳ			ɲ				ŋ						ɴ
Lateral Fricative				ɬ ɮ
Lateral Non-Fricative				l			ɭ			ʎ
Rolled				r																ʀ
Flapped				ɾ			ɽ													ʀ
Fricative	ɸ β		f v	θ ð	s z	ɹ	ʂ ʐ	ʃ ʒ	ɕ ʑ	ç ʝ				x ɣ						χ ʁ	ħ ʕ	h ɦ
Frictionless Continuants	w	ɥ	ʋ	ɹ						j (ɥ)				(w)						ʁ
										Front			Central						Back
Close	(y ʉ u)									i y			ɨ ʉ						ɯ u
	(ʏ ɷ)										ɩ ʏ								ɷ
Half-close	(ø ɵ o)											e ø			ɵ				ɤ o
																ə/ɜ
Half-open	(œ ɔ)														ɛ œ				ʌ ɔ
																æ		ɐ
Open	(ɒ)																a		ɑ ɒ

Other sounds

pʻ ƪ ƺ ř ƫ ż = z̢ σ ƍ ọ ǫ k̫ o͆ ʓ ʆ ʇ ʖ ʗ

[edit] 1989 Revision

The 1989 version of the IPA differed from the 1993 version in only two respects:

There was still only a single pair of mid central vowels, ə, ɵ, with ɜ provided as an "additional" mid central vowel (as in 1932);
The voiceless implosives were recognized with their own symbols, ƥ, ƭ, ƈ, ƙ, ʠ.

[edit] 1993 Revision

The only difference between the modern (2005) and 1993 versions of the IPA is that the modern version includes a labiodental flap (ѵ).

[edit] References

International Phonetic Association. (1949).The principles of the International Phonetic Association, being a description of the International Phonetic Alphabet and the manner of using it, illustrated by texts in 51 languages. London: University College, Department of Phonetics.
International Phonetic Association. (1989). Report on the 1989 Kiel convention. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 19 (2), 67-80.
International Phonetic Association (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65236-7 (hb); ISBN 0-521-63751-1 (pb).
Albright, Robert W. (1958). The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its background and development. International journal of American linguistics (Vol. 24, No. 1, Part 3); Indiana University research center in anthropology, folklore, and linguistics, publ. 7. Baltimore. (Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1953).
Ellis, Alexander J. (1869-1889). On early English pronunciation (Parts 1 & 5). London: Philological Society by Asher & Co.; London: Trübner & Co.
Hultzen, Lee S. (1958). [Review of The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its backgrounds and development by R. W. Albright]. Language, 34 (3), 438-442.
Kelly, John. (1981). The 1847 alphabet: An episode of phonotypy. In R. E. Asher & E. J. A. Henderson (Eds.), Towards a history of phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kemp, J. Alan. (1994). Phonetic transcription: History. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 6, pp. 3040-3051). Oxford: Pergamon.
Passy, Paul. (1888). Our revised alphabet. The Phonetic Teacher, 57-60.
Pullum, Geoffrey K., and William A. Ladusaw (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide, 2nd edition. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ISBN 0-226-68536-5.
Sweet, Henry. (1880-1881). Sound notation. Transactions of the Philological Society, 177-235.
Sweet, Henry. (1971). The indispensable foundation: A selection from the writings of Henry Sweet. Henderson, Eugénie J. A. (Ed.). Language and language learning 28. London: Oxford University Press.