Franz Boas' early Northwest Coast alphabet

During his work for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), Franz Boas (1858-1942) designed a phonetic alphabet for the Native American languages of British Columbia in his correspondence with Horatio H ale (1817-1896), who had been entrusted with the supervision of Boas' activ ities. This correspondence is of importance because it provides a record of the formation of Boas' alphabet and documents Hale's role in this process. Boas' correspondence and linguistic publications on Inuktitut and Bella Co ola which preceded his BAAS reports show that he was already familiar with the conventions used in the alphabets of Kleinschmidt (1851), Lepsius (183) , and Rink(1884, 1887-1891) when he began fieldwork for the BAAS. His lette rs to John W. Powell (1834-1902) and Hale give further testimony that he wa s also acquainted with the alphabets of F. M. Muller (1854), Powell (1880), and Techmer (1884). In his dialogue with Hale, Boas expressed his dissatis faction with the existing transcription systems, which he considered imprac ticable or deficient. Boas envisioned a scientific phonetic alphabet based on his psycholinguistic theory of phonetics. He was particularly concerned with the accurate representation of schwa, of different series of fricative s and stops, and of so-called synthetic or alternating sound, which encount ered in the Native American languages of British Columbia. Both Boas and Ha le believed future work would not corroborate the existence of surd-sonants (voiceless-voiced sounds) as members of triple series of consonants consis ting of surds, surd-sonants, and sonants. Boas did not deny the existence o f surd-sonants, but, within his theory of phonetics, he considered them as sounds that were alternately perceived as being voiced and voiceless. Boas' first version of his BAAS alphabet and his introductory remarks to the pho netics of the Native American languages described in his BAAS reports show that practical considerations (simplicity, readability, quotability, and av ailability of types) and Boas' psycholinguistic interpretation of surdsonan ts took priority over the latter's concerns for an accurate scientific tran scription system.