1 - Orthography, pronunciation, and phonetic notation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Introduction
The phonetic study of a language presupposes that one can refer to its sounds without ambiguity; in other words, a system of representation is required where a given sound is always associated with the same symbol and where a given symbol is always associated with the same sound. Because there is no such systematic correspondence between orthography and pronunciation in French, it is necessary for our purposes to resort to a special notation which fulfills this condition (a single symbol for a single sound). The goals of this chapter are to introduce the system of phonetic transcription used in this book (that of the International Phonetic Association) and to justify its use by sketching out the complex nature of the relation between orthography and pronunciation in French.
Phonetic notation
Every language uses a fixed and restricted number of sounds which are assembled into syllables which in turn form words. In French, there are 35 sounds (17 consonants, 15 vowels, and 3 glides), which will be represented by the symbols in square brackets given in Tables 1.1–3. Each symbol is accompanied by three key-words where the letters corresponding to the phonetic value of the symbol are italicized. These phonetic symbols are taken from the inventory recommended by the International Phonetic Association (see Appendix A). They are commonly used in linguistics, together with some variants linked to different traditions.
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- Information
- The Sounds of FrenchAn Introduction, pp. 3 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987