L212 Firthian Prosodic Analysis.
Lecture 7.
Phonetic interpretation.
Phonetic information can be presented in several ways. Traditionally, phonology has relied on transcriptions of spoken material. This lecture will look at some of the issues surrounding transcription. Then we will consider why strings of symbols are not an appropriate 'output' for phonological rules, and then go on to look at some more non-segmental means of phonetic description.
Symbol based phonetics
The traditional basis of phonetics, and of phonology, has been the transcription. There are many kinds of transcription (see Abercrombie 1967). The main issues are • the shapes of the letters • the number of letters used • the conventions for interpreting the transcriptions.
• simple transcriptions use letters of the simplest possible shapes: ie. prefers Romanic shapes [o v e] to [ç V E], etc. Simple transcriptions use few or no diacritics: prefer [t] to [t5], etc. Romanic letters have a more general meaning in IPA than non-Romanic ones: ie [f] can stand for [f ∏] but [∏] can only stand for a bilabial. Departures from simple transcriptions make the transcription more comparative: eg. the use of [®] for [r] makes the transcription more comparative: 'comparative' because it facilitates comparison between different kinds of speech.
• phonemic transcriptions use the smallest number of different letters possible; ie. for each distinctive sound, there is one unique symbol. This is a linguistically motivated choice. Transcriptions with more symbols in are more allophonic.
• 'broad' and 'narrow' are more traditional terms meaning less and more detailed respectively.
• transcriptions can be systematic or impressionistic. Impressionistic transcriptions use symbols which have general phonetic values and are thus noncommittal about linguistic contrasts; systematic ones can be made only with reference to a particular language, and imply some claim about the way the language works.
• phonetic transcriptions are useless without a set of conventions with which to interpret them. The more phonemic a transcription is, the greater the need for conventions to interpret the symbols. eg. you need to know about the quality of the laterals in English words like [l√l].
Some problems with symbols
Symbols are not straightforward: they can be misleading if not accompanied by some conventions for their interpretation because they can make us think that we know what they stand for. This is an illusion.
There is a danger of reification: imagining that the transcriptions are in some sense real. In fact they are just one way of describing what we hear. They make claims about the relative importance of what we hear. 
The main building blocks of theIPA are symbols that stand for whole groupings of articulations: [m] stands for: regular vocal fold vibration, bilability, complete oral closure, velum lowering… all or none of which may have linguistic significance. (Sprigg 1957, Kelly & Local 1989.)
The output of phonology should not be a string of symbols which we claim to have phonetic significance (ie. we shouldn't say "this is the phonetics of X"), since we still have to interpret these symbols into articulations.
YET: The vast majority of modern phonologies are symbol-based. They unite all the features of segments at the so-called "timing tier" or "melodic tier". 
FPA can't do this: (1) prosodies and phonematic units express contrasts at different places in structure, and there is no level at which they are all 'brought together' and  at which they describe segments or symbol-sized units; (2) phonetic exponents are not treated as segments but as combinations of phonetic parameters.
This doesn't mean that FPA has no use for transcriptions. They are needed: • as a handy way of writing down what can be observed • as a starting point for an analysis • to illustrate the analysis. But FPA doesn't elevate transcriptions to the status of "output of the phonology" or "the phonetic level". They are only partial descriptions of real-world speech events. (And note the prevalence of instrumental findings in FPA papers!)
Phonetics without symbols
Well, not quite. But phonetics which isn't a symbol-bound description of speech.
Two main aspects:
• temporal statements
• parametric statements
Temporal interpretation
Recall that for Carnochan (1957) timing is part of the statement of phonetic exponency. This is because phonology describes structure, and has no beginning or end, no time. Speech on the other hand happens in time. 'Order' describes a relation between things in the phonology; 'sequence' is about how one thing comes before another in the speech.
Coleman (1992) — the following constraints apply on temporal interpretation of syllables (NB he doesn't separate Syllable from the exponents of the Syllable, etc.):
SyllableStart = RhymeStart = NucleusStart
SyllableEnd = RhymeEnd = NucleusEnd 
	— because the Rhyme is the head of the syllable, and the Nucleus is the head of the Rhyme.
OnsetStart = SyllableStart
CodaEnd = SyllableEnd
ie:

Predictions: consonantal coarticulation falls out; deletion = masking of exponents:

This model is called 'concatenation' (rather than 'cocatenation'). It is based on the phonetic models of speech production that assume that consonantal articulations are in some sense 'overlaid' on to vocalic ones.
Similar constraints could be stated: eg. S1' < S2'; O' < Co' (the exponents of syllable 1 come before those of syllable 2, etc.). Such relations in GPSG are called Linear Precedence relations.
Parametric interpretation
Parametric interpretation describes what the articulators are doing; temporal interpretation says when they're doing it. There are lots of models of parametric interpretation.
Articulatory phonology
AP has been pioneered by Browman & Goldstein in a series of articles. Basically: the units of phonology are gestures that are organised into a score. Typical gestures are: palatal gesture, alveolar closing gesture, velar closing gesture, etc. Gestures in turn are coordinated articulatory movements: just like when you throw a ball, the gesture is "throwing a ball", which you perform by raising your arm and moving it quickly.
Articulatory gestures differ from one another in two basic ways: the slope of the gesture (ie. how quickly it reaches its target and comes away from the target), and the magnitude of the gesture (ie. how close the gesture gets to its target). Gestures can overlap: this way gestures may be masked by one another, so that a gesture may be present but inaudible.
Strengths: it's constrained. Changes to gestural scores can only occur by the change in magnitude of a gesture or the overlapping of a gesture, not by the removal of a gesture, or the arbitrary insertion of a gesture. It is further constrained by the physical properties of the vocal tract and the task dynamics that drive the articulators.
Weakness: the vast majority of phonologists and phoneticians see this as a model of phonetic interpretation, not as a phonology; it's not clear whether AP is really as universal as its proponents claim: why don't we all have the same phonology? What makes me sound like an Englishman, not a Frenchman with a bad accent? Where's the dividing line between something being a contrastive gesture and it being the same gesture with different magnitude? (ie. how is contrast expressed in AP? and structure?)
Conclusion
Any theory of phonology needs to be accountable to observable phonetic data. Phonetic interpretation can be expressed in a a number of ways. All phonetic description is necessarily an abstraction. Each mode of phonetic description is partial, though some modes are more complete than others: AP, if properly stated, should predict the acoustic properties of speech (and in fact B&G have a speech synthesiser based on an articulatory model to demonstrate!). From the point of view of perception, we might care more about the acoustics.
FPA isn't bound to any theory of phonetic interpretation; but its mode of phonological expression is clearly more compatible with non-segmental and non-symbol-based phonetic languages.