History of The International Phonetic Alphabet - 1989 Revision

1989 Revision

A primary purpose of the Kiel Convention of 1989 was to clean up the IPA. Several sounds had long been transcribed with more than one letter, contrary to the founding principles, because agreement could not be reached on which to use. The scope of the IPA was also expanded, with new letters and diacritics, and the notation of tone was completely revamped.

Formatting changes

• The order of the rows in the chart was changed again, to

plosive, nasal, trill, tap/flap, fricative, lateral fricative, approximant, lateral approximant, ejective stop, implosive

• The clicks, labial-palatals, and labial-velars were removed from the chart
• The retroflex and postalveolar columns were swapped
• The two vowel charts were combined
• The superscript rhotic diacritics were no longer mentioned, though they were still available, as they follow from the general principals of diacritics.

Substantive changes

Design

• The vowel allographs ⟨ɷ⟩ and ⟨ɩ⟩ were eliminated in favor of ⟨ʊ⟩ and ⟨ɪ⟩
• The special diacritics for palatalization, as in ⟨ƫ⟩, and labialization, as in ⟨k̫⟩, were replaced with superscript letters, as in ⟨tʲ⟩ and ⟨kʷ⟩, which had been informally used following the general principal of diacritics, that superscript letters confer their characteristic quality to the main letter
• The click symbols ⟨ʇ ʖ ʗ⟩, which the Association had been unable to persuade Khoisanists and Bantuists to adopt, were replaced with the pipe symbols ⟨ǀ ǁ ǃ⟩, which people had generally been using instead.
• The rounding diacritics were placed under the vowel, as in ⟨ɔ̹ ɔ̜⟩
• Tone, which had been indicated with an iconic line preceding the syllable, was now written one of two ways: with a similar iconic line following the syllable and anchored to a vertical bar (Chao's tone letters), or with more abstract diacritics written over the vowel (acute = high, macron = mid, grave = low), which could be compounded with each other.

Additions

(letters)

• Chao's tone letters, such as ⟨˥ ˦ ˧˩˨⟩
• The voiced implosives ⟨ʄ ʛ⟩
• The voiceless implosives ⟨ƥ, ƭ, ƈ, ƙ, ʠ⟩
• The palato-alveolar click ⟨ǂ⟩
• The epiglottal consonants ⟨ʜ⟩, ⟨ʢ⟩, and ⟨ʡ⟩ (though not added to the chart)
• The voiced palatal fricative ⟨ʝ⟩ was distinguished from ⟨j⟩
• The velar lateral ⟨ʟ⟩
• The bilabial trill ⟨ʙ⟩

(diacritics)

• creaky voice, as in ⟨a̰⟩
• apical and laminal, as in ⟨s̺ s̻⟩
• linguolabial, as in ⟨θ̼⟩
• advanced and retracted tongue root, as in ⟨e̘ e̙⟩ (using the old advanced and retracted tongue diacritics)
• mid-centralized, as in ⟨ɯ̽⟩
• short vowels, as in ⟨ă⟩ (this had been the non-syllabicity diacritic, which was now moved to under the vowel, as in ⟨aɪ̯⟩)
• formalized the distinction, always available, between velarized ⟨ˠ⟩ and pharyngealized ⟨ˤ⟩
• nasal, lateral, and inaudible release, as in ⟨tⁿ tˡ t̚⟩
• upstep and downstep, ⟨ꜛ ꜜ⟩
• Three basic tone diacritics, as on ⟨ə́ ə̄ ə̀⟩, which could be compounded, ⟨ə᷄ ə᷆ ə᷈⟩, or doubled for extra-high and -low tone, ⟨ə̋ ə̏⟩

(prosody)

• syllable break, ⟨.⟩
• major and minor prosody breaks, ⟨‖ |⟩
• global rise and fall of pitch, ⟨↗ ↘⟩

Several of these had long been used, but had not been officially included in the IPA until now.

Substractions

• ⟨ʆ⟩ (= ʃʲ or ɕ) and ⟨ʓ⟩ (= ʒʲ or ʑ)
• Czech ⟨ɼ⟩ (now written with a diacritic, as ⟨r̝⟩)
• ⟨ʀ⟩ was specified as a trill, rather than either a trill or flap