On 2016-10-10, Hans Åberg <haber...@telia.com> wrote: >> On 10 Oct 2016, at 22:15, Julian Bradfield <jcb+unic...@inf.ed.ac.uk> wrote: >> What do you mean? The IPA in narrow transcription is intended to >> provide as detailed a description as a human mind can manage of >> sounds. It doesn't care whether you're describing differences between >> languages or differences within languages (a distinction that is not >> in any case well defined). > > It is designed for phonemic transcriptions, cf., > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_International_Phonetic_Alphabet
It *was* designed, in 1870-something. Try reading the Handbook of the IPA. It contains many samples of languages transcribed both in a broad phonemic transcription appropriate for the language, and in a narrow phonetic transcription which should allow a competent phonetician to produce an understandable and reasonably accurate rendition of the passage. Indeed, a couple of decades ago, I participated in a public engagement event in which a few of us attempted to do exactly that. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.