From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: RFC: ASCII representation of IPA (technical draft)
Organization: SPSS Inc.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 17:50:04 GMT

I appreciate Evan Kirshenbaum's work on a new ASCII IPA standard.  
I have a few suggestions, arranged in order of decreasing sensibleness.

1. /I<rnd>/ should be written /I./, for consistency's sake.  

2. I vote for /B/ for the voiced bilabial fricative too-- it ruins the
   symmetry with f and v, but B is easier to relate to the IPA beta.

3. How about using " for centralized vowels?  This is reminiscent of the
   IPA diaresis and simplifies u<cnt>, i<cnt> etc. to u", i".

4. Why not just use ' for ejectives?  There should be no confusion with the 
   stress mark, because the latter is written at the beginning of a syllable
   and syllables should be separated by spaces.  

   By the way, is there any reason you specify ejectives as /b<'>/, /d<'>/
   etc., when IPA uses p', t', etc.?  How do you voice an ejective?

5. How about using [ instead of <d> for dentals?  It's reminiscent of the
   IPA diacritic and it's shorter.  It can be distinguished from the brackets
   of phonetic transcriptions because the latter are matched.

6. You might add three-character abbreviations for the other IPA vowel 
   diacritics-- raised, lowered, more/less rounded, particularly open, etc.

7. The soft underbelly of your system, IMHO, is the A's.  A 6-character
   symbol for the world's most popular (central) A seems unsatisfactory.
   Perhaps the simplest solution is to use /ae/, /a/, and /A/ for the
   low unrounded vowels.  A true /a/ + /e/ diphthong could be written /a<>e/.
   Better yet, why not use /&/ for the fronted A?  (It looks like an ash 
   if you squint.  Plus, _and_ and _ampersand_ have this sound.)

It may be useful to some to see the system arranged diagrammatically.  


     blb-- -lbd-- --dnt-- --alv-- -rfx- -pla-- --pal--- --vel-- -----uvl-----
 
nas    m   m<lbd>     n[      n      n.            M       N           n<uvl>
stp  p b           t[ d[    t d   t. d.        c   J     k g      q      G
frc  F B    f v    T  D     s z   s. z.  S Z   C C<vcd>  x X    x<uvl> X<uvl> 
apr        r<lbd>     r[      r      r.            j       j~          X<uvl>
lat                   l[      l      l.          l<pal>    L
trl  b<trl>                r<trl>                                      r<uvl>
flp                           *      *.                                  R
ejc  b'               d['     t'                           k'
imp  b<imp>        d<imp>   d<imp>               J<imp>  g<imp> q<imp> G<imp>
clk  p!            t!         c!                   c!      k!

 
     ---- lbv ----   --phr--  ---glt---

nas         n<lbv>                               alv lat frc: s<lat> z<lat>
stp  t<lbv> d<lbv>              ?                    lat flp: *<lat>
frc  w<vls>   w      H H<vcd>   h<H>                 lat clk: l!
apr           w                 h 


    ----- unr -----     unr     ----- rnd -----
    fnt   cnt   bck     cnt     fnt   cnt   bck
                        rzd
hgh  i     i"    u-              y     u"    u
smh  I                           I.          U
umd  e   @<umd>  o-    R<umd>    Y           o
mid        @             R             @.    
lmd  E     ^"    ^               W     O"    O
low  &     a     A               &.    a.    A.
Newsgroups: sci.lang