Insert a phoneme

First, make sure necessary phonological features and values are available in the Phonological Features tool (if you use phonological features).

Reason: When you enter the IPA symbol in the IPA Symbol field, Language Explorer adds phonological features and values to the Phonological Features field, if it is empty. If the Description field is empty, Language Explorer also adds a description. Fields with existing content are not changed.

1. In the Navigation Pane, click Grammar, and then click Phonemes.

2. Do one of the following:

   • On the Insert toolbar, click .

   • On the Insert menu, click Phoneme.

   • Press the shortcut keys Ctrl+I.

   A new phoneme is inserted.

3. In the Refer to as field, type one or more characters that represent the way the phoneme is commonly represented in the vernacular writing system.

4. In the IPA Symbol field, type the IPA symbol for the phoneme.

5. If necessary, do the following:

   • In the Description field, type or edit the description.

   • In the Phonological Features field, choose phonological features. Alternatively, you can Bulk Edit Phoneme Features.

6. Below the In Orthography as label, enter all the different ways the phoneme is written in the vernacular writing system:

1. • In the default (first) Grapheme field, enter one or more characters that represent the way the phoneme commonly appears (is written) in the vernacular writing system (often the same as you entered in the Refer to as field). See also: Non-base characters as graphemes.

   • Insert additional Grapheme fields, if there is more than one way to write the phoneme in the orthography.

Tip

• A grapheme is anything that functions as a distinct unit within an orthography. A grapheme may be a single character, a multigraph, or a diacritic, but in all cases graphemes are defined in relation to the particular orthography.

• • The glossary at https://scripts.sil.org has definitions for phoneme, grapheme, and related terms.

  • If you will use Pathway, see Pathway multigraphs.

• Natural classes and environments can use phonemes, and these can then be used by a parser. They appear in the grammar sketch.

Related Topics

Phonemes fields overview

Phonemes overview

Phonological Features field (Phonemes)