Re: Diphthongs in ASCII (was: CHAT letter names etc)

wrote:

> On Tuesday, March 2, 2004, at 04:39 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 06:26:47AM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
> >> [ai] is strictly two vowels.
> >
> > That depends on whom you ask,
>
> Not if they're pronounced as tw syllables, surely? It's a feature known as
> hiatus and does occur in natlangs; e.g. French 'maïs' (Br. maize, sweet
> corn; Am. corn) is _disyllabic_. In phonetic transcription [ma'is] would,
> I suppose, be clear enough; but stress is not phonemic in French and the
> phonemic transcription must be /mais/ - but it ain't a diphthong.
>
I had thought that '.' represented a syllable break.  It was so used two
years ago when I was last active on the list.  However, a cursory glance
over http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/x-sampa.htm and
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm gives no use of this symbol,
and I am unfamiliar with the changes to XSAMPA that make CSX.
-M