Systems for the Phonetic Transcription of English: Theory and Texts

This book covers in a systematic way the main systems of phonetic transcription currently used for English. Unlike other texts in the market, which focus on just one type of transcriptional model, the book provides theoretical information and full practice for all systems.

The material is divided into seven sections headed by a lengthy introduction to the history and development of the International Phonetic Alphabet. A set of eighteen samples from real contemporary colloquial English (British English), graded in terms of difficulty, follows. The accent chosen is the one known as RP or BBC English, with some minor concession to other regional varieties which do not stray dramatically from RP. Different models of representation are used under three main transcription systems: qualitative, quantitative and mixed. By using an identical set of texts in ordinary spelling for each system, the reader can constantly check different ways of transcribing a word or an utterance depending on the model used.