Combining Right Parenthesis Above Right

It limits an above diacritic to a sound’s final part.

ExtIPA (the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet) uses ᫂ with an above diacritic to show partial voicing or devoicing at the sound’s end. It is fine-detail notation used in clinical phonetic transcription.

On its own, ᫂ names neither a sound nor a feature; the neighboring diacritic supplies the feature.

How did this mark enter phonetic notation?

Its documented path runs through clinical speech transcription.

The ExtIPA recommendations were developed at the 1989 Kiel Convention, an international meeting on phonetic notation, and appeared in print in 1990. Speech-language pathologists (clinicians who work with speech and communication) and clinical phoneticians (speech-sound specialists) requested a way to transcribe disordered speech. The system was revised as their work called for finer distinctions. Unicode assigns the character used to store the mark; ExtIPA conventions give it a reading.

The convention also appears in detailed transcription of ordinary speech: some writers use parentheses to show language-specific voicing timing. ExtIPA’s use for atypical speech remains its clinical role.