Perceptual transcription and acoustic data: the example of /i/ in Yongning Na (Tibeto-Burman

1 Many thanks to Latami Dashi (拉他咪·达石) for his help and advice during fieldwork, and to the language consultants for their hospitality and their patience. Our thanks to Liberty Lidz for useful discussions about the phenomena that she observed in Luòshuǐ and elsewhere. The authors alone are responsible for any errors. On the basis of fieldwork on a Tibeto-Burman language, Yongning Na, some reflections are offered on three interrelated issues: (i) To what extent does perceived allophonic variation correspond to articulatory/acoustic reality, to what extent does it merely reflect the investigator’s perceptual expectations? (ii) How can acoustic data help select International Phonetic Alphabet symbols for the phonemic units brought out by distributional analysis? (iii) How can acoustic data help characterise the vowels and consonants encountered in fieldwork, both in a structural (language-internal) perspective, and in a cross-language perspective