Sinological phonetic notation

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Chinese linguists use a number of additional phonetic symbols that are not part of the standard International Phonetic Alphabet.[1][2] These symbols are commonly encountered in introductory textbooks of Chinese phonetics and in introductory descriptive works of any Chinese "dialects".[1] Many Western linguists who work in the field of Chinese linguistics also use these symbols,[1] for instance, Loggins (2022) writes "[to] introduce the general reader to what they may encounter should they consult one of such publications, I am using the IPA-castaways [ʅ] and [ɿ]".[3]

Letters

These primary vowel letters are used by those who want symbols for five equally-spaced vowels in formant space.

  • ⟨ᴀ⟩ = central [ä]
  • ⟨ᴇ⟩ = mid [e̞]
  • ⟨ꭥ⟩ or ⟨ω⟩ = mid [o̞]

These letters, sometimes mistakenly called "apical",

Karlgren, from the 'long i' and 'long y' of the Swedish Dialect Alphabet
, with a terminal added to resemble a long ⟨ι⟩ iota.

  • ⟨ɿ⟩ = [ɨ]
  • ⟨ʅ ⟩ = [ɨ˞]
  • ⟨ʮ⟩ = [ʉ]
  • ⟨ʯ ⟩ = [ʉ˞]

These consonant letters are featural derivatives of ⟨ɕ⟩ and ⟨ʑ⟩, which often stand for [ʃ] and [ʒ] rather than

alveolo-palatal
[ɕ] and [ʑ] in the Sinological literature.

  • ⟨ȡ⟩ = [dʲ]
  • ⟨ȴ⟩ = [ʎ] or [lʲ]
  • ⟨ȵ⟩ = [ɲ] or [nʲ]
  • ⟨ȶ⟩ = [tʲ]
  • ⟨ɕ⟩ = [ɕ] or [ʃ]
  • ⟨ʑ⟩ = [ʑ] or [ʒ]

Tone diacritics

Sinologists tend to use superscript

Chao tone letters of the IPA, even though the numerals conflict with their values in other parts of the world. The correspondence is 1 for low pitch and 5 for high; single digits are frequently doubled to prevent confusion with tone numbers
, though sometimes a single digit is used with a short vowel and a double digit with a long vowel.

  • ⟨¹⟩ or ⟨¹¹⟩ = [˩]
  • ⟨²⟩ or ⟨²²⟩ = [˨]
  • ⟨³⟩ or ⟨³³⟩ = [˧]
  • ⟨⁴⟩ or ⟨⁴⁴⟩ = [˦]
  • ⟨⁵⟩ or ⟨⁵⁵⟩ = [˥]

References

  1. ^ a b c Handel, Zev (2017). "Non-IPA Symbols in IPA Transcriptions in China". In Sybesma, Rint (ed.). Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Brill.
  2. ^ Chang, Kalvin; Cui, Chenxuan; Kim, Youngmin; Mortensen, David (October 2022). WikiHan: A New Comparative Dataset for Chinese Languages. Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on Computational Linguistics. Gyeongju Hwabaek International Convention Center: International Committee on Computational Linguistics. p. 3565.
  3. ^ Loggins, Nathan (2022). Ethnic History and Language Typology in Western China: The Cases of Xining, Daohua and Bai (PDF) (Thesis). University of Washington. pp. xv, xvi.
  4. doi:10.1017/S0025100303001208
    .
  5. S2CID 16432272
    .



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