Narrow transcription

Many, perhaps most people who come and take a Knight-Thompson workshop have already studied phonetics before in some form. Many have also done some phonetic transcription, though for the most part what people have done is quite broad (and even prescriptive in purpose!) and so is more like phonemic transcription than phonetic transcription. And then, of course, there are those who come to the workshops completely fresh, not having studied phonetics before in any form.

Though KTS is much more than just phonetics, of course, narrow, descriptive phonetic transcription is a key element of the work. A high degree of proficiency in it is a requirement for certification. Since opportunites to get feedback on transcription choices are usually pretty limited, we’re going to start occasionally posting short audio files here and asking anyone who wants to do so to post a narrow transcription in the comments. Though the clips will be short, don’t feel like you have to make a full and complete transcription in order to play. If there’s just one word or one little bit that intrigues you, have a go at that and put it up. The hope here is that we can have some rolicking good conversations, and that those who really want to get a better handle on transcription can use this as a forum for practice and learning. It’s very much the intention that this be a group conversation, by the way, not one in which you offer your transcription and we critique it. Engage with each other down below in them thar comments—comment on other people’s transcriptions, ask questions, offer alternatives. You’re a pretty civilized bunch, by and large, so I think we ought to be able to do this in a respectful and supportive way.

I suppose there could be some fear of exposing oneself, so let’s just agree not to judge each other, shall we? I hereby declare this a safe environment (!), all participants are welcome, and no one is going to think less of anyone for offering a transcription that might be off the mark in some respect. After all, if we can’t have a go at things and risk making mistakes, how can we ever learn?

So: here is our first installment. Have at it!

Complexity nourishes art

I taught my first classes of the new year this week, so I’ve been thinking a lot about Dudley. I miss him tremendously, as so many of us do. But at the same time, I feel incredibly fortunate not just to have known him and learned so much from him, but also to be in a position where I get to continue learning from him by teaching his work.

Phil and I made a fascinating discovery in August, while we were teaching Experiencing Speech in Irvine. It was a small discovery, just a tiny matter of terminology, really, but an affecting one nonetheless. I’ve always preferred the term oral posture over vocal tract posture, even though the latter is obviously a better descriptor for what it is we’re talking about. I often find myself studying accents with interesting and characteristic glottal settings. That sure isn’t the mouth, but it is absolutely an aspect of the thing we’re looking at. (When I’m teaching it, I call it oral posture more often than I call it vocal tract posture, but I make it clear that vocal tract posture is really what we’re talking about.)

I’m not quite sure why I prefer the term oral posture, in spite of its slight incompleteness. I guess it just feels handier and sounds better to me. I hadn’t known this before this August, but apparently Phil and Dudley had different opinions on this. Each of them actually came up with the concept independently, when they were working separately, Dudley at Irvine and Phil in Ohio. When they came back together they realized they’d been working along exactly the same lines. Phil’s term for this idea was oral posture. Dudley preferred vocal tract posture. They continued to disagree about this even after Speaking With Skill was published. (It’s an indication of just how harmonious their partnership was that not only did I have no idea they disagreed about this, I didn’t even realize they had different preferences.)

Now to my discovery. Curious about how the book introduces the concept, I went back to look. In its first mention, the term appears as ‘vocal tract posture.’ Just like that—it’s vocal tract posture, but only the term posture is bolded. The few remaining times the overall concept is referred to, it’s just posture, with no modifier at all. Phil and I were deeply moved to discover this neat solution, so very Dudley in its elegance and subtlety. Yes, it’s vocal tract posture, not oral posture. (It is Dudley’s book, after all!) But based on the initial bolding and subsequent references, it’s really only posture that’s the relevant, ‘official’ term. The ‘vocal tract’ part in the first mention is a mere descriptor, a modifier. Call it whatever kind of posture you will, Dudley seems to be saying, it’s only the posture part that’s important.

He’s still teaching us.

On Tuesday, I had my students read out the ‘Principles, Perhaps’ from the beginning of Speaking With Skill, something I always do at the beginning of the year. It’s a great place to start. They always resonate with me, and make me re-resolve to be a better, humbler, more inquisitive, wiser (and wittier) teacher. There was one that kept ringing in my ears for the rest of the day, though.

This work embraces complexity in its content. Complexity nourishes art. Reduction of the complexity of speech choices reduces the art.

Complexity nourishes art.

One brave student questioned this. He said that in his mind, the best art was always simple. I said that although this could be said to be a matter of taste—some might legitimately prefer Rubens to Rothko—he might have a point. Great acting, I think, is often motivated by simple thoughts, deeply taken in. There’s another way to think about this, though. Rothko had to go through a lot to come to the simplicity of the style we all know him for. The complexity is there, it’s just not on the surface.

I’ve always loved an answer Judi Dench gave once to a question about what acting felt like for her. She told the interviewer that it felt as though she was standing behind a giant computer console filled with dials and levers and knobs and gauges, frantically running around manipulating and monitoring the machinery, now pulling a lever, now pressing a series of buttons, now adjusting a dial. What I find so remarkable about this is that it’s hard to think of a less technical-seeming actor than Judi Dench. Think about it—you simply can’t see the seams when she’s acting, whether on the stage or on camera. I gather this is true even in rehearsal. There are no seams. She’s seamless. And yet all the while, somewhere inside, she’s frantically running around working the machinery!

Complexity nourishes art.

How exciting.

Dudley Knight

1939-2013

It seems likely that anyone coming to this blog at this point will have heard of Dudley’s passing. If not, here’s what happened: On June 25th, 2013, walking home from rehearsal, on a beautiful cool night in Irvine, Dudley Knight was struck down by a heart attack. He died soon after without regaining consciousness.  

What we lost on that night is hard to reckon, impossible to quantify, and just plain difficult to think about.  However, as I get more practiced at dodging the most painful pieces of shrapnel, I discover that I’m able to settle into those memories of Dudley that bring me joy. He was a funny, funny man. The funniest, sharpest, driest wit I’ve ever encountered. He was a masterful story teller, an insightful coach, a thoughtful friend…

…and what I’d like --- what I think we might all appreciate, as a salve to our deprived, and grieving hearts – would be to share a few stories. I know I have a collection, and I’m keen to hear yours. It doesn’t matter how short or long the story, whether it’s funny or somber. Let’s just give ourselves the gift of sharing our collection of Dudley moments.

Here’s one for starters:

Dudley taught Speech in a small room in a trailer – a temporary building  long since built over by new structures, and looking out the window, we could see a wide expanse of lawn. One of my classmates had a habit of coming late, and as we saw her strolling slowly across the lawn, apparently unconcerned that she was already 10 minutes late, Dudley seemed to have had enough. He barked out, “Give  me a nonsense word!” like he was calling for more ammunition. Someone offered “schwiznet” /ˈʃwɪznɛt/, and he thanked them and turned back to the lesson. That lesson was on vowel length. When our classmate finally arrived, Dudley welcomed her with a smile and let her know that she had missed the beginning of his lecture on “vowel schwiznet”  but that he would be happy to review.  He proceeded to do just that, talking about the concept of schwiznet,  quizzing us on degrees of schwiznet, asking us about the distinction between a vowel being half, of fully schwizzed. When the tardy student asked about the condition of lack of schwiznet, Dudley replied “If there is no schwiznet, then we would describe the vowel as ‘glit’ /ɡlɪt/. He kept this up through the class, and even through subsequent classes, until I finally broke down and let the cat out of the bag.

That is some dry humor, and perhaps the deep origin of Omnish.

Tell me one of your Dudley stories.

SPEAKING WITH SKILL, 2^ND EDITION, 1^ST DRAFT

Now that Speaking with Skill is readily available worldwide just in time for holiday gift-giving, I could allow a sigh of relief to flow egressively from my alveolar sacs; were it not for the fact that I managed to distribute liberally—throughout its pages—words,  sentences and sometimes entire paragraphs that need to be changed. Others might call these “errors” or “omissions” or “stupidities,” and some reviewer undoubtedly will, but I consider the opportunity to fix them an ongoing retirement “hobby.”

I offer therefore the following four corrections to the text. This is just for starters, mind you. I know that there are some typos, poorly shaped phrases, fuzzily expressed ideas and instances of questionable phonetic transcription in the book. I will let these pass until I actually do the second edition. (Though do But these are four that I am moved to correct right away; and that certainly need to be borne in mind by anyone teaching out of this book. Here they are, in descending order of egregiousness.

1. Why I got a C in First-Year Greek in college.  This one actually qualifies as stupidity. I have a long, boring and self-serving explanation as to why I came to write the two sentences that I will quote, and I will provide it upon written request, but I will not burden you with it here. I present them are as they appear on page 66, second paragraph, of Speaking with Skill: ‘It comes from the Greek word fdoggoV, meaning “sound”. Oh, by the way, voice the “th”.’ So wrong. Oh, so wrong. What that spelling would come up with, if spoken, would be pronounced approximately as “fdongos,” which is at least only mildly prurient. The correct Greek spelling of the word in question is fqoggoV. It is pronounced with the characteristic “phth” combination that one often finds in Greek. Oh, by the way, you don’t voice the “th”, so the sentence that breezily says oh by the way you do should be eliminated.

2. The missing approximants. This is a sin of omission. There is one line omitted in the Symbol Practice Exercise on page 143: the Lateral Approximants. Here it is. Place it right between Approximants and Other Symbols:

 l             ɭ             ʎ             ʟ      

3. Three lost paragraphs found.  On page 208, while discussing the disadvantages of the “vowel substitution” method for transcriptions of accent differences, I say grandly “But first we must examine. . .” allowing the ellipsis to build suspense all the way to the very next line that starts with the heading The Territory. The territory in the book, though, is a bit cramped, because I left out three paragraphs that actually explain what is going on. Here is the entire text that would continue onto page 209:

“The Territory. When we look at a vowel quadrilateral, divided into sections by lines and populated by symbols in suspiciously orderly array, we may get a hint that we are looking at a theoretical construct. And so we are. When famed British phonetician Daniel Jones established this version of a vowel chart (modifying earlier variants) in 1917, he did so by placing most of the front and back vowels in equidistant intervals from close to open. The few remaining vowel phonemes are also placed with some symmetry in between these so-called cardinal vowels. Jones constructed this formal graph to define the physical territory of the vowel chart, limited to its quadrilateral shape by the limits of vowel articulation within the oral cavity. By so doing, he was able to define physically the territory within the chart by providing specific points of physical reference, all related to degree of tongue arching/cupping or lip rounding/unrounding, the two chief ways of shaping acoustically the unobstructed flow to form vowels. He did not place the cardinal vowels in these positions because he was in any way suggesting that words using these phonemes must be pronounced at the cardinal positions.

“Physically you could enact the voiced, unobstructed flow anywhere within the limits of the vowel quadrilateral, including—but not limited to—the places where the cardinal vowels sit in isolated splendor.  What’s more, if we lump together all the world’s individual speakers’ patterns in all accents in all languages, every possible physical and acoustic exploration of the quadrilateral will happen. There are innumerable gradations of action and sound.

“Each vowel phoneme carries with it a unit of meaning that differentiates it from the other vowel phonemes and as long as we keep their realizations as sounds within that stern “cardinal” separation that Jones created, the “territory” is an easy one to navigate and there is no question about what phoneme you are saying. But in practice—and Jones knew this—each vowel phoneme exists within what I like to call its phoneme cloud that contains all the discrete possibilities for pronunciation variation that still convey the vowel phoneme’s unique meaning. Within the territory of the vowel quadrilateral there are (depending on what language you are speaking) a lot of phoneme clouds, each with its own wispy territory and its own shifting boundaries. On a clear day, the phoneme clouds remain separate or butt gently against one another. Sometimes, in cases of inclement linguistic weather, these clouds intersect and even flow into the territory of one another; these blended areas are where transcriptions that depend on vowel substitutions may be convenient; but they can also get you into real trouble, because if you don’t have a larger context within a sentence to define meaning your listener may not know what you’re saying. You may pronounce “sheep” like “ship”, or “ship” like “sheep”, for example; so if you write a purchase order that says “I want to buy a sheep” and phonetically transcribe (What purchase order is not written phonetically these days?) the last word as [ʃɪp] just because in your own pronunciation the phoneme cloud for [ʃip] has strayed southward, you may be surprised at what is delivered to your farm.

“The further a phoneme cloud gets into the territory of another phoneme cloud, the more the resilience of meaning relies on these larger linguistic structures – grammar, other words in the sentence, tone of voice, emphasis, voice quality, intonation, and so on. For all these reasons, vowel substitutions are a limited way to show the phonetic variation that we find in accents. They are convenient, though.”

4. Pronunciation Exercise Phonetics Revised.   Pages 314 – 315. I have revised the phonetic transcription for this passage, cleaning up some errors and inconsistencies. I hope you don't have to squint too much at the font size.

If you are using Speaking with Skill as a text in your classes, I hope you will take these corrections to heart.  Especially that "phthong" spelling in Greek. 

         

Oh, those wandering GOATs

I think it's high time we stopped representing the So-Called General American GOAT phoneme as /oʊ̯/.  I don't think it can be very controversial to suggest that [oʊ̯], phonetically-speaking, would be a very unusual vowel to hear from most American speakers in 2012.  The only Americans who come close to a fully-rounded [o] in realizing this phoneme are from what dialectologists call the North Central dialect region—the Dakotas, Minnesota, Michigan's UP, and parts of Wisconsin, Montana & Iowa.  (We might also add Alaska's Mat-Su Valley, where Sarah Palin hails from—much of which was settled in the 1930s by transplants from Minnesota).

I can think of two arguments on behalf of retaining /oʊ̯/.  The first of these is that it is the established convention.  /oʊ̯/ has been used to represent the vowel in American pronunciations of GOAT for a very long time—at least since Kenyon and Kurath.  While choosing to buck the convention might create some confusion, however, I think it's a small price to pay for greater phonetic accuracy.  (I feel similarly about using /ɜ˞/ to represent the American NURSE vowel, and have long taken to using and teaching it as /ɘ˞/.)  Perhaps, eventually, we might change the convention.  In the long run, I think such a change would lessen student confusion.

Spelling is the other argument I can imagine in favor of keeping /oʊ̯/.  It has an 'o' in it, after all.  The letter 'o' is pronounced with the GOAT vowel, and stands in the popular imagination as the phoneme itself.  I can see how we might lose something by re-phonemicizing GOAT without an 'o.'  However, as with the argument about convention, I think there is more to be gained than lost.

Let's suppose I've persuaded you that we should do away with /oʊ̯/.  But what do we replace it with?  After all, another argument in favor of keeping it might be that we can find no likely replacement candidate.  There are a large variety of American realizations of this phoneme, after all; things like [ɔ̜ʊ̯̽, ɘʊ̯, ʌɯ̯̽, e̽ʏ̯, ɤu̯] and a great many more besides.

I'd like to propose /ɤʊ̯/.  I am perhaps biased, as this is more or less the way I would describe my own realization*.  Nevertheless, amid a sea of variation, I think this makes a certain sense.  I'd argue, first of all, that it is important that the first element be unrounded.  This, in fact, is the main thing that makes /oʊ̯/ so unsatisfactory to me.  The majority of Americans simply do not round the first element of this diphthong.  (Or if they do, it isn't much.)  I would say that the phoneme is characterized, in fact, by a progressive rounding of the lips through the diphthong.  And though there are many Americans who don't round the lips much or at all anywhere in the realization of this vowel—not even in the coda—lip-rounding is still common enough that I think we can leave the ʊ unchanged.

A final note—this is far from an academic argument.  Though we are generally more interested here in phonetics than in phonemics, the phonemes make a difference to how we and our students think about and teach things.  If I am teaching a So-Called General American accent to a non-native speaker, it makes much more sense to teach the phoneme as /ɤʊ̯/ and then teach to that phonetic target.

So let's do it!  All in favor of /ɤʊ̯/ raise your hands!  (Counter-suggestions welcome, of course.  Let's have a debate about it, by all means.  But I do think it's high time for a change.)

*Doug Honorof has suggested to me that my GOAT vowel starts lower—more open-mid than close-mid.  After a lot of introspection and phthong-testing™, I still think my nucleus is close-mid in height.  He's invited me up to Haskins Lab at Yale, where he will norm my vowel space and definitively measure the height of my GOAT nucleus.  Only one of us can be right!  (Unless it turns out to be perfectly -mid, I suppose.  We could call that a draw.)  Stay tuned.  If the suspense is killing you, call me and I'll murmur some GOATs in your ear.  You can make up your own mind.

CERTIFICATION CLASS of 2012

Today we celebrate the hardy souls that have completed the first-ever Knight-Thompson Speechwork Certification Course. Those of you who have done a six-day workshop can, perhaps,  imagine the kind of focus and stamina it took to keep at it for three weeks. Please join us in congratulating them on their hard work!

Dudley & Phil

Andrea Caban  Now based in Southern California, Andrea is an actor, writer, producer, private voice and speech coach, and a New York Innovative Theatre award-winning solo artist. She has performed her solos shows regionally and abroad (at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Intimate Theater in Cape Town, Boise Contemporary Theater and New York’s P.S. 122, among others). Andrea is the dialect expert on HowCast.com.

	Julie Foh  holds an MFA in Voice and Speech from A.R.T.’s Institute for Advanced Theatre Training and teaches voice, speech, and accents at Rutgers.  Coaching credits include Cardenio and Ajax in Iraq (A.R.T.); Nightlands (New Georges); Miss Lilly Gets Boned (Studio 42).  She is an Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework®.
	Adrianne Moore  is a freelance director and dialect coach and an associate professor of voice and speech at Utah State University. She is the resident dialect coach for the Salt Lake Acting Company. Other voice and dialect coaching credits include productions for Pioneer Theatre Company, Utah Contemporary Theatre, Utah Festival Opera, Old Lyric Repertory Company and for the film The Saving of Sarah Cain.
	Joseph Papke is a professional actor, speech/text coach, and theater educator in Minneapolis, MN.  He has worked for the Guthrie Theater, Park Square Theatre, Penumbra Theatre, the University of Minnesota, the University of St. Thomas, and St. Olaf College, among others.  He earned his MFA from The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Academy for Classical Acting and is a proud member of Actors' Equity.  www.josephpapke.com
	Rockford Sansom Freelance coach based in NYC. Performer: Broadway tours of 42nd Street (Asia), Wonderful Town (First National), among others. Coached and performed: Off-Broadway and regionally. Teaching: Seoul National, Shanghai Conservatory, Saint Leo, among others. He has trained in Fitzmaurice and Estill voice certification programs. Education: PhD, Capella; MFA, Central Florida
	Erik Singer  teaches voice, speech, accents, and text. He has played leading roles Off-Broadway and at many major regional theatres, and voiced numerous commercials, documentaries, animated shows, and audiobooks.  He is an Associate Editor for the Voice and Speech Review.  MFA: Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art; BA: Yale University.
	Marina Tyndall  is a freelance Dialect Coach based in London. She works as faculty Dialect Coach to BFA Acting students from Rutgers University Mason Gross at Shakespeare’s Globe Education and is a visiting lecturer in Speech, Accents and Phonetics at Central School of Speech and Drama.
	Bernard Vash Flying Actor Studio, with James Donlon and Leonard Pitt.13 years with the American Conservatory Theatre. Edith Skinner, Anne Lawder, Timothy Monich.  Linklater Voice: 2009 observed Kristin Linklater at Columbia University. FitzmauriceVoice Teacher Certification Program. Dialect Coach: Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Teacher: Temple University, San Francisco State University.
	Shannon Vickers  is an Assistant Professor at the University of Winnipeg. She has coached professionally for Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, zone41 theatre, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Theatre Projects Manitoba, Shakespeare in the Ruins, The Citadel Theatre (Banff), and Canadian Stage. Shannon earned an MFA in Theatre Voice Pedagogy at the University of Alberta.

CERTIFICATION!!

This is just a short post to say 'Welcome!" to our first-ever certification group.

It was fourteen years ago that I joined the first Fitzmaurice Voicework Certification class. It seems impossibly long ago, and yet I remember the people, and the feeling of palpable anticipation so vividly. Dudley taught the Speech sequence and introduced the idea of Omnish in what must have been one of its earliest iterations. I completely misunderstood the assignment, and went home and wrote out in detailed phonetic transcription my Omnish oration. Fortunately, I quickly realized that I had made a misstep and quietly shoved my script into my pocket.

Since that time I have learned so much and traded so many ideas back and forth with Dudley, and with the students of these workshops, that I feel like an entirely different person. I hope that these three weeks will teach me yet again how small my frame of reference was.

I went looking for a picture to represent this post, and I found this:

H Stanley Thompson teaching residents 1968

My father, posing for a serious picture with his Ophthalmology residents. I expect our certificants to study the residents' expressions, and work it into their gurn rotation.

We will be using this blog for the next three weeks to carry our conversation beyond the walls of the Chelsea Studios. All are welcome to join the discussions, but if you choose to lurk, you can expect to read the comments of nine, very clever, very engaged students, tackling the ideas that Dudley and I set out.

I can't wait to start!