Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet
The extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, also extIPA symbols for disordered speech or simply extIPA, are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the International Phonetic Alphabet for the phonetic transcription of disordered speech. Some of the symbols are occasionally used for transcribing features of normal speech.
Many sounds found only in disordered speech are indicated with diacritics, though an increasing number of dedicated letters are used as well. Special letters are included to transcribe the speech of people with lisps and cleft palates. The extIPA repeats several standard-IPA diacritics that are unfamiliar to most people but transcribe features that are common in disordered speech. These include preaspiration, linguolabial, laminal fricatives and for a sound with no available symbol. The novel transcription is used for an English molar-r, as opposed to for an apical r; these articulations are indistinguishable in sound and so are rarely identified in non-disordered speech.
Sounds not found in non-disordered speech include fricative nasals and percussive consonants. Sounds sometimes found in the world's languages that do not have symbols in the IPA include denasals and fricatives that are simultaneously lateral and sibilant.
Letters
The letters added by the extIPA are the following. The letters added in the 2015 expansion are not supported by Unicode as of 2020, though a request is pending.VoQS letters may also be used, as in for a buccal interdental trill.
| Lateral | Voiceless grooved lateral alveolar fricative, intended for a lateral lisp | |
| Lateral | Voiced grooved lateral alveolar fricative, | |
| Lateral | Voiceless retroflex lateral fricative | |
| Lateral | Voiced retroflex lateral fricative | |
| Lateral | Voiceless palatal lateral fricative. The voiced fricative may be or, in standard IPA, . | |
| Lateral | Voiceless velar lateral fricative. The voiced fricative may be or, in standard IPA, . | |
| Velopharyngeal | Voiceless velopharyngeal fricative. The voiced fricative is. | |
| Velopharyngeal | Voiceless velopharyngeal trill or 'snort'. | |
| Velodorsal | Voiceless velodorsal plosive | |
| Velodorsal | Voiced velodorsal plosive | |
| Velodorsal | Velodorsal nasal | |
| Pharyngeal | Voiceless upper-pharyngeal plosive | |
| Pharyngeal | Voiced upper-pharyngeal plosive | |
| Percussive | Bilabial percussive | |
| Bidental percussive | - | |
| Sublaminal lower-alveolar percussive. This letter is used with the alveolar click for, an alveolar click with percussive release, a "cluck". | - |
Diacritics
The extIPA has widened the use of some of the regular IPA symbols, such as for pre-aspiration, or for uvularization, as well as adding some new ones. Some of the extIPA diacritics are occasionally used for non-disordered speech, for example for the unusual airstream mechanisms of Damin.One modification is the use of subscript parentheses around the phonation diacritics to indicate partial phonation; a single parenthesis at the left or right of the voicing indicates that it is partially phonated at the beginning or end of the segment. These conventions may be convenient for representing various voice onset times. Phonation diacritics may also be prefixed or suffixed rather than placed directly under the segment to represent relative timing.
The transcriptions for partial voicing and devoicing may be used in either the sense of degrees of voicing or in the sense that the voicing is discontinuous. For the former, both parentheses indicate the sound is mildly voiced throughout, and single parentheses mean a partial degree of voicing at the beginning or end of the sound.
For the latter, both parentheses mean the sound is voiced in the middle, while the single parentheses mean complete voicing at the beginning or end of the sound.
Altering the position of a diacritic relative to the letter indicates that the phonation begins before the consonant or vowel does or continues beyond it. The voiceless ring and other phonation diacritics can be used in the same way if needed. For example, indicates that voicelessness continues past the, equivalent to.
Other extIPA diacritics are:
Diacritics may be placed within parentheses as the voicing diacritics are above. For example, indicates a partially denasalized.
Following a longstanding tradition of the IPA not specified on the regular IPA chart, any IPA or extIPA letter may be used in superscript form as a diacritic, to indicate the onset, release or 'flavor' of another letter. For example, for with a lateral-fricative release, or for with lateral-plus-central release. Combining diacritics can be added to superscript diacritics, such as for with bidental aspiration.
The VoQS voice-quality symbols take IPA and extended-IPA diacritics, as well as several additional diacritics that are potentially available for the extIPA. At least the subscript dot for 'whisper' is sometimes found in IPA transcription, though that diacritic is also commonly used for apical-retroflex articulation.
Prosodic notation and indeterminate sounds
The Extended IPA has adopted bracket notation from conventions transcribing discourse. Parentheses are used to indicate mouthing, as in, a silent sign to hush. Parentheses are also used to indicate silent pauses, for example. Double parentheses indicate extraneous noise, as in ⸨2 syll.⸩ or ⸨2σ⸩ for two extraneous syllables, though the IPA convention is that double parentheses indicate that a sound is obscured, as when one person talks over another, and this is identified as the extIPA usage.In the extIPA, indistinguishable/unidentifiable sounds are circled rather than placed in single parentheses. An empty circle, ◯, is used for an indeterminate segment, ◯σ an indeterminate syllable, Ⓒ a segment identifiable only as a consonant, etc. Full capital letters, such as C in Ⓒ, are used as wild-cards for certain categories of sounds, and may be combined with IPA and extIPA diacritics. For example, ◯ indicates an undetermined or indeterminate voiceless plosive. Regular IPA and extIPA letters may also be circled to indicate that their identification is uncertain. For example, ⓚ indicates that the segment is judged to probably be. At least in handwriting, the circle may be elongated into an oval for longer strings of symbols.
Curly brackets with Italian musical terms are used for phonation and prosodic notation, such as and terms for the tempo and dynamics of connected speech. These are subscripted within a notation to indicate that they are comments on the intervening text. The VoQS conventions use similar notation for voice quality.
Chart
Three rows appear in the extIPA chart that do not occur in the IPA chart: "fricative lateral + median", "fricative nasal" and "percussive". A denasal row is added here. Several new columns appear as well, though the linguolabial column is the result of a standard-IPA diacritic.Superscript variants
The customary use of superscript IPA letters is formalized in the extIPA, specifically for unusual releases of plosives, as can be seen in the lower-left of the full chart. However, no extIPA letters are supported by Unicode in their superscript form, and only some of the regular IPA letters are supported.Sample text
A sample transcription, using extIPA and Voice Quality Symbols:Original: "The World Cup Finals of 1982 are held in Spain this year. They will involve the top nations of the World in a tournament lasting over four weeks, held at fourteen different centers in Spain. All of the first round games will be in the Provencal towns with the semi-finals, and finals held in Barcelona and Madrid."