Add reduced forms of vowels in sentences

I really like this, but nearly all of the words are presented in their full form - there are very few reduced forms of pronunciation. For example "I was at the shops" is transcribed as "[aɪ wɒz æt ðə ʃɒps]" which is very accurate when all of the words are pronounced separately, but in a sentence most 'grammatical' words would be pronounced with their reduced form 'schwa' version, producing "[aɪ wəz ət ðə ʃɒps]" Adding this would make 'phonetizer' truly awesome!!

Nick Moore , 21.02.2012, 08:22

Response from the site administrator

alvinru, 21.02.2012

Thanks for your suggestion, Nick. It used to be the way you describe it, but I was once advised by a knowledgeable person that I should not do it like that. I was conviced that my way of doing it was the right one, but he seemed to be pretty sure that I should use words in their full (strong) form.

Now I'm not sure who is right and what is the right thing to do. I'll have to seek advice from more specialists, I guess.

I myself am a linguist but I'll need to consult someone who specializes in English phonology.

Idea status: completed

Comments

Ray, 20.04.2012, 16:02

This is a great tool - especially for my CELTA trainees who need occasionally to transcribe but don't need to acquire full transcription skills themselves - thanks! I believe Nick is right and that weak forms should be transcribed as such if the programme is open to it. It would then be a very powerful facility if, for example, when there is contrastive stress or a word which would normally be weak comes in utterance-final position, the user could click on a button to transform the word into a strong form. It would also be closer to normal transcription conventions to have slashes / rather than square brackets [ ] at each end.

Once again thanks for a powerful tool - I can only imagine how much work has gone into it!

alvinru, 29.04.2012, 17:53

Thanks, Ray. I'll try and replace the [] with slashes shortly.

As for the reduced forms, if I find a way to incorporate that ability into the program, I'll definitely do so.

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Add reduced forms of vowels in sentences

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