What does a diacritic indicate in phonemic transcription?

A diacritic in phonemic transcription serves to provide additional information about a particular sound, indicating a change in its quality. This might include aspects such as nasalization, voicing changes, or other phonetic details that alter how the sound is articulated but do not necessarily change the meaning of the word.

For example, a diacritic might show that a vowel is nasalized, thereby affecting the pronunciation but not the underlying phonemic structure. This fine-tuning allows for a more accurate representation of speech sounds that may not be captured by standard phonemic symbols alone, which typically represent only the most basic sound units.

The other options address different aspects of language but do not capture the primary function of diacritics in this context. Changes in meaning relate more to phonemic distinctions rather than phonetic nuances. Silent letters refer to letters that do not correspond to sounds in speech and do not involve diacritics. Stress in a syllable is marked in other ways and generally doesn’t involve diacritics either.