Vowel transcription systems: An Australian perspective

Abstract

Transcription is an essential clinical tool for speech-language pathologists as it provides a permanent written record of communicative behaviour and forms an important source of data for analysis, interpretation, decision making, and dissemination. One of the responsibilities in speech-language pathology is to faithfully capture the speech production characteristics of clinical populations so that informed management decisions may be made. Notation systems that are appropriately suited for this purpose are mandatory. In Australia today, the conventional phonemic transcription system was first described over 60 years ago. However, an alternative to this traditional system has more recently been proposed by Harrington, Cox and Evans (HCE). This paper details the HCE system and argues its advantage as a clinical tool for speechlanguage pathologists in Australia. This new system provides a more accurate phonetically oriented foundation against which atypical vowel production can be assessed. It is further argued that the HCE system can form the basis for narrower phonetic examination and has pedagogical value in the description of Standard Australian English.

Speech Sound Disorders in a Community Study of Preschool Children

“…Children in this sample could produce approximately 80% of the 24 Australian English consonants (average of 19.10). Additionally, they could produce almost all (average of 19.62) of the 20 Australian English vowels (12-13 monophthongs and 7-8 diphthongs) (Cox, 2008;McLeod, 2007). However, the children in the current study demonstrated varying levels of severity and intelligibility.…”

“…MD = Mitchell and Dellbridge (1965) symbols; HCE = (Harrington, Cox & Evans, 1997). The DEAP uses the MD symbols; however, recent acoustic analysis suggests that the HCE symbols are a more accurate representation of Australian English (see Cox, 2008). *Marginal = either correct on some but not all occasions, or an insufficient sample was obtained to determine consistency (typically only one example was obtained).…”