PinyinIPAConverter — Hanyu Pinyin to IPA

Specifics

The standard conversion table is based on the source mentioned below. Though depiction in IPA depends on many factors and therefore might highly vary it seems this source is not error-free: final -üan written [yan] should be similar to -ian [iɛn] and -iong written [yŋ] should be similar to -ong [uŋ].

As IPA allows for a big range of different representations for the sounds in a varying degree no conversion to Pinyin is offered.

Currently conversion of Erhua sound is not supported.

Features:

  • Default tone sandhi handling for lower third tone and neutral tone,
  • extensibility of tone sandhi handling,
  • extensibility for general coarticulation effects.

Limitations:

  • Tone sandhi needs special treatment depending on the user’s needs,
  • transcription of onomatopoeic words will be limited to the general syllable scheme,
  • limited linking between syllables (e.g. for 啊、呕) will not be considered and
  • stress, intonation and accented speech are not covered.

Tone sandhi

Speech in tonal languages is generally subject to tone sandhi. For example in Mandarin bu4 cuo4 for 不错 will render to bu2 cuo4, or lao3shi1 (老师) with a tone contour of 214 for lao3 and 55 for shi1 will render to a contour 21 for lao3.

When translating to IPA the system has to deal with these tone sandhis and therefore provides an option 'sandhiFunction' that can be set to the user specified handler. PinyinIPAConverter will only provide a very basic handler lowThirdAndNeutralToneRule() which will apply the contour 21 for the third tone when several syllables occur and needs the user to supply proper tone information, e.g. ke2yi3 (可以) instead of the normal rendering as ke3yi3 to indicate the tone sandhi for the first syllable.

Further support will be provided for varying stress on syllables in the neutral tone. Following a first tone the weak syllable will have a half-low pitch, following a second tone a middle, following a third tone a half-high and following a forth tone a low pitch.

There a further occurrences of tone sandhis:

  • pronunciations of 一 and 不 vary in different tones depending on their context,
  • directional complements like 拿出来 ná chu lai under some circumstances loose their tone,
  • in a three syllable group ABC the second syllable B changes from second tone to first tone when A is in the first or second tone and C is not in the neutral tone.

Coarticulation

In most cases conversion from Pinyin to IPA is straightforward if one does not take tone sandhi into account. There are case though (when leaving aside tones), where phonetic realisation of a syllable depends on its context. The converter allows for handling coarticulation effects by adding a hook coarticulationFunction to which a user-implemented function can be given. An example implementation is given with finalECoarticulation().

Pronunciation of final e

finalECoarticulation() supports the following coarticulation occurrence: The final e found in syllables de, me and others is pronounced /ɤ/ in the general case (see source below) but if tonal stress is missing it will be pronounced /ə/. This implementation will take care of this for the fifth tone. If no tone is specified ('None') an ConversionError will be raised for the syllables affected.

Source: Hànyǔ Pǔtōnghuà Yǔyīn Biànzhèng (汉语普通话语音辨正). Page 15, Běijīng Yǔyán Dàxué Chūbǎnshè (北京语言大学出版社), 2003, ISBN 7-5619-0622-6.

Source

  • Hànyǔ Pǔtōnghuà Yǔyīn Biànzhèng (汉语普通话语音辨正). Page 15, Běijīng Yǔyán

    Dàxué Chūbǎnshè (北京语言大学出版社), 2003, ISBN 7-5619-0622-6.

  • San Duanmu: The Phonology of Standard Chinese. Second edition, Oxford

    University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-921578-2, ISBN 978-0-19-921579-9.

  • Yuen Ren Chao: A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. University of California

    Press, Berkeley, 1968, ISBN 0-520-00219-9.

See also

Mandarin tone sandhi
Article on Mandarin tones
IPA
Article on Wikipedia
The Phonology of Standard Chinese. First edition, 2000
Preview on Google Books

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