From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: RFC: ASCII representation of IPA (technical draft)
Date: 15 Sep 92 09:40:03 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <1992Sep14.175914.9714@hplabsz.hpl.hp.com> evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum) writes:
>I like the idea of including a table in the draft.

I like it too, but I would prefer it to contain only those segments
for which there is a single shortest way of writing them (including
all those written as a single character).  There always are many ways
to write a segment, and if /C<vcd>/ is the right way to write a voiced
palatal approximant for some purposes, /J<frc>/ may be more appropriate
for others.  Don't prescribe one to the exclusion of the rest.

>I'd like to suggest that we *don't* make a distinction between, say
>{rzd} and {rsd} ("rhoticized" vs. *"raised") and that we allow people
>on the two sides of the Atlantic to choose to use a "z" or and "s" as
>they spell the word. (For "palatalized", "labialized", etc.)

If I didn't propose that, it was only because I was going to use the
{*sd} versions anyway.  As for "raised", {rai} is a good deal more
revealing that {rsd}.  So many distinctive features end in "-d"
anyway, and we want the abbreviations to be distinctive, too.

>I vacillate on whether I like /[/ for dentals.  On the positive side,
>it certainly looks something like the IPA diacritic.  On the negative
>side, having unbalanced brackets makes me uncomfortable.  (It also
>does the same to my editor (which does paren matching).)

So does mine, damn him.  But he should have got used to it by now, as
I use unBritishly many smileys, and they include an unmatched right
round bracket.

>We should probably *not*
>allow closing delimiters as diacritics, though.

No; in any case not right square brackets or slashes.

>Most of the time the word breaks and pauses are more important.

Strictly phonetically speaking, of course, word breaks don't exist,
but our attention is not always confined to phonetics.

>The "`" symbol is still available,

It is a beautiful diacritic, isn't it?

>and I would suggest using it for ejectives or possibly implosives.

I suppose I could live with that, although again it would not be my
first choice, as most of the time it indicates aspiration, which is
complementary to glottalisation in many languages.

>We could use it for both (until someone tells me that
>there are voiced ejectives or voiceless implosives--I think that the
>latter are physically impossible).

And I think the former don't occur.

>If we're running out of symbols (and we allow different meanings for
>vowels and consonants), I'd suggest that /"/ be {cnt} for vowels and
>{uvl} for consonants.

Er, {uvl}?  I don't think it deserves a shortcut; we already have
several segments there written as simgle characters (/q/, /G/, /X/).
Why not {"} for ejectives and implosives?

>I agree with Ivan Derzhanski

Just "Ivan".  If I'm to leave out your surname, you leave out mine.

>that we don't want digraphs.  It might be
>a good idea, however, to allow people to write affricates as
>consecutive segments and provide a separator when it is important to
>note that two segments which would normally be affricates are not.

So be it.  In any case, authors are free to include a preamble in
which to reassign some symbols.

>I had forgotten that vowels could be pharyngealized.  Sigh.  I'd be
>willing to let /~/ be pharyngealization (and velarization), but that
>leaves us with needing to mark nasalization.  /M/ could work for
>that, but we *really* need to have a symbol for palatal nasals.  I
>agree that /M/ doesn't look like an enya.  Perhaps we should get a
>diacritic for palatal articulation.

Or perhaps not.  Like uvulars, palatals aren't too frequent, and we
already have /c/, /j/, /C/, and /J/ in that department, so a palatal
diacritic wouldn't be too useful.  I see a much greater need for a
palatalisation diacritic.  Anyone know of a language with both a
palatalised dental nasal and a palatal nasal?

Sigh.  Why, oh why were there only two nasals in Latin?

>I think we may want to leave one or two diacritics (perhaps /+/ and
>/=/) explicitly unspecified so that individual authors can use them to
>mark the "feature of interest" in particular discussions when that
>feature doesn't have a simple diacritic.

Indeed we may, and we also have some free segment characters (/$/, /%/).

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK