IPA Obsolete and Nonstandard Symbols
Many different people use the IPA for a large variety of reasons. Because of this, there will always be a variety of opinions among those who do phonetic transcription. A linguist who works in the field will be less formal by necessity, and those with purely academic pursuits will follow a more stringent path. As such, it’s important to remember that change is inevitable. Many IPA characters and diacritics have been modified, retired, or replaced throughout history.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses a variety of ancient and nonstandard symbols. Throughout history, IPA characters representing phonetic values have been modified or completely replaced. Other characters have been added for phonemes that do not possess a specific symbol in the IPA. This number includes duplicate symbols that were replaced due to user preference and unitary symbols that were generated with diacritics or digraphs to reduce the inventory of the IPA. The rejected symbols are now considered obsolete, though some are still seen in the literature.
Why Some Symbols Are Retired
Some combinations of letters for primary and secondary speech sounds are also obsolete because the same principle could be done using diacritics. Click letters were retired, but a few are still around to cause legibility issues when used with brackets, slashes, or prosodic marks. Rare voiceless implosives were also dropped.
Regional customs have contributed symbols that are now defunct but were previously in otherwise standard IPA publications. Affricates and Americanist symbols are common in this category. The IPA uses small capitals, but some languages have adopted capital variations, especially in Africa. Typewriter substitutions commonly use capital letters when IPA support is unavailable.
How Linguists Explain Nonstandard Symbols
The IPA is favored for most transcriptions, but American linguists sometimes modify its use with their own phonetic notation or in combination with other symbols. This practice helps reduce the error rate of reading transcriptions written by hand or the awkward perception of some symbols. Practices may also vary between authors, individual researchers, or languages, and explaining their reasons for changing is highly encouraged.
At the Intersection of Phonology and Phonetics
The simplest IPA symbols are standard letters from the roman alphabet, and more exotic letters can convey greater phonetic detail. Phoneticians are allowed to make simple transcriptions using the most general symbols as long as a record of those values is included. Or, they can use more specific IPA symbols and forego the description. The term for multiple types of transcription is “systematic phonetic transcription.” This reflects the view that phonology and phonetics are inextricably intertwined. The idea is believed because phonology relies on phonetic observation. However, it is just as valid to say those observations come from a phonological framework.
Phonetics deals with the production of speech sound by humans, and phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially in different languages. However, the only pure description is the data originating from a high-quality recording. When you begin segmenting or characterizing symbols, phonological references are sure to be present.