New answers tagged phonetic-symbols
1
To add, "in IPA, each symbol represents a unique sound" is not true even in non-phonemic transcriptions. The current Principles of the International Phonetic Association states:
The IPA is designed to be a set of symbols for representing all the possible sounds of the world's languages. The representation of these sounds uses a set of phonetic ...
6
As jk mentioned, it's common to only transcribe the features that are relevant (a "broad" transcription). But there are a few other reasons why the mapping from symbol to sound might not be one-to-one.
First, transcriptions more often focus on phonemes (mental units representing sounds), not phones (the sounds themselves). And the naming of ...
10
Yes, this is not only possible but regular practice. In general, one only notates the kind of features of a sound that are relevant for the transcription and it is left to reader to add the omitted details. So when /x/ is realised differently in Hindi/Urdu and Assamese, it is assumed that the reader is aware of that difference and knows how to pronounce a ...
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