From: evan@hpl.hp.com (Evan Kirshenbaum)
Subject: Re: RFC: ASCII representation of IPA (technical draft)
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 19:45:17 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

In article <10642@spark.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>Herein is my first reaction to E Kirshenbaum's ASCII IPA proposal.

"Evan", please.  I never have gotten used to people referring to me by
my last name. :-)

>My biggest complaint is that I see no mention of affricates.  My
>Slavic ear and tongue insist on the articulatory and acoustic
>distinction between an affricate and a stop followed by a fricative.
>I know that the distinction is not relevant for English, but English
>is not the only language discussed here.  _Proposal:_ Include a
>diacritic (/+/, say) to turn a fricative into a homorganic affricate.

Hmm.  My phonology course (which wasn't English specific) insisted
that there was no such distinction (other than that introduced by
syllable boundaries), but phonology wasn't my focus, and I'm perfectly
willing to bow to those for whom it was (not to mention Ivan's native
speaker intuitions).  In any case, my inclination would be to add the
diacritic to the stop rather than the fricative.

>>pla     paleto-alveolar
>>pal     paletal
>
>What is going on here?  I thought the word was "palatal".

What's going on is that I can't spell and I thought that there were so
many weird words in the document that it wasn't worth running it
through a spelling checker.  I just checked, and my on-line dictionary
doesn't include "palatal" anyway.  Sigh.

>>ejc     ejective
>
>I seem to recall that this is the same as "glottalised" (as in the
>Caucasian languages) or "emphatic" (as in Arabic) -- which one, and
>do we write the other one in the same way?  But in either case,
>glottalised/emphatic consonants are fairly frequent, so /<'>/ seems
>too long to me.  How about /"/ or /;/?

I think that "glottalised" is the meaning I meant.  Ladefoged defines
"ejectives" as "made with a glottalic egressive airstream mechanism"
and gives examples from Hausa and Amharic.  I'm not sure how Arabic
"emphatics" are made, but I think that the notation is usually the
same.  I agree that this is common enough to warrant a single
character diacritic.

>>B    -- Unused --
>
>I suggest that {vcd,blb,frc} (Greek small letter beta, currently /V/)
>be moved here.  Reason: It looks like it.

The only reason that I used /V/ and /F/ was the symmetry.  I agree,
though, that /V/ should probably be used for a vowel.

>>F {vls,blb,frc}         U+03A6 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PHI
>
>Actually, Greek small letter phi.

Sure looks like a capital to me:  full height, no slant, serifs on top
and bottom.

>>M {pal,nas}         ??  U+0272 LATIN SMALL LETTER N HOOK
>>  {lbd,nas}         ??  U+0271 LATIN SMALL LETTER M HOOK
>
>The second, I'd say; the letter doesn't _look_ like an enya.

Yeah, I wasn't too satisfied with this choice.  My reason for choosing
palatal over labio-dental was that it seemed more useful to be able to
spell the palatal with a single letter, and with the bias toward
English, I wanted to reserve /N/ for the velar.

>>Q   -- Unused --
>
>This might be used for, say, {vcd,vel,frc} (Greek small letter gamma,
>currently /X/).

I could go for that.

>>V {vcd,blb,frc}         U+03B2 GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA
>
>I'd rather have {lmd,bck,unr,vwl} (turned v, currently /^/) or some
>other vowel here.

Unless we decide to make /^/ a diacritic, I'd rather exploit the
visual similarity.  I could see making /V/ a vowel, perhaps
{low,cnt,unr,vwl}? 

>>X {vcd,vel,frc}         U+0263 LATIN SMALL LETTER GAMMA
>
>Visual similarity suggests {vls,uvl,frc} (Greek small letter chi).

Makes sense to me.

>>^ {lmd,bck,unr,vwl}     U+028C LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED V
>>* {vcd,alv,flp}         U+027E LATIN SMALL LETTER FISHHOOK R
>
>Both of these look more like diacritics than letters; wouldn't it be
>better for them to be used as such?

Well, /^/ certainly *looks* like the IPA character on most terminals.
I couldn't think of a better character to use for a flap.

>Looking at my keyboard, I see /$/, /%/, and /&/, all of which are not
>currently used as letters, but could be.
>
>On the other hand, /\/, /=/, /"/, /+/, and /;/ could serve as diacritics.
>
>>{dnt,nas}       /n<d>/
>>{vls,dnt,stp}   /t<d>/
>>{vcd,dnt,stp}   /d<d>/
>
>We'll have to agree to be able to omit the /<d>/.

Yup.  I'd like to find a good single-character diacritic for dentals,
though.

>>{dnt,ejc}       /b<',d>/
>
>That's /d<',d>/, which I think may be written /d'<d>/.

Yeah, that's a cut-and-paste error.

Thanks for the feedback.

Evan Kirshenbaum
    HP Laboratories
    3500 Deer Creek Road, Building 26U
    Palo Alto, CA  94304

    kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com
    (415)857-7572