I for one would welcome discussion on Friday about what we think the
function of the lexicon will be, which may help guide us to its best final
form. The current, dictionary-derived IPAs were always going to need some
supplementing and hand-editing, particularly in view of their maddening
convention about syllabic consonants (i.e. not showing them as syllabic).
But what default should we use, and how broad or narrow should it be? Do
we differentiate between a broad transcription in the lexicon and some
narrower representation of Mark's actual realisations, stored with the
relevant speech file? I too noticed Mark's interesting range of weak
vowels; also that he did NOT use a syllabic /l/ in "paddle", but did use a
syllabic /n/ somewhere else. I agree that weak forms are crucial.
In the end it's the structures that need to be recoverable and the
interpretation should follow from them. But if there's a consistent
difference between the weak vowels in "ness" and "less" I presume we need
to be able to indicate that somehow in the lexicon?
Lots to think about, and I'm sorry this is not very coherent. But it's
important we get it right!
Jill