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Document Details :

Title: Transcription and Representation in Scottisch Gaelic Dialect Studies
Author(s): BOSCH, Anna R.K.
Journal: Orbis
Volume: 39    Date: 1996-1997   
Pages: 79-90
DOI: 10.2143/ORB.39.1.519441

Abstract :
It is of course a truism that the transcription of speech to written form cannot itself be an atheoretical exercise. Even the most careful and detailed of narrow phonetic transcriptions involves some judgement on the part of the transcriber or linguist as to segmentation and the domain of suprasegmentals such as stress, pitch, nasality, etc. Furthermore, in the course of transcribing we make decisions as to which features of speech are accidental and which are linguistically significant. For example, voice quality is not considered linguistically significant in English: if a speaker were to use Frye, or creaky voice, we would be most likely to consider this an accidental or idiosyncratic property of the speaker, and omit it from our transcriptions.

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