Re: [wEr\ Ar\ ju: fr6m] ?

> Date:         Fri, 9 Nov 2001 10:34:55 -0500
> From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
>
> Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> > The basic question is about the contour marks (vertical bars with
> > strokes to the left). Do they go before or after the voiced sound
> > during which they occur? (From the example of glottalization marked by
> > preposed /?/, I'm guessing that it's before).
>
> The silly things never seem to get used in actual IPA text,
> only in drawings illustrating how a particular language's tones
> are pronounced.  Otherwise, superscript digits are used, either
> on the 1-5 system or language-specific.  (In Proto-Tai they
> like A, B, C superscripts.)
>
> > (It's not that important, though. Unicode only has the basic level
> > contour marks, corresponding to _B, _L, _M, _H, _T. Even rising and
> > falling, _R and _F, are missing.
>
> The intention of the Unicode Standard is that consecutive tone
> contours be ligatured into the prescribed shape.  So one codes
> U+02E5 U+02E9 to get the tone letter representing Mandarin tone 4.
Ah, I forgot that we have an expert on Unicode on board. There's a few
little things I'd like to know, John --- you can answer in private
email if you want to spare the rest of the list:

If the contour symbols combine, they aren't a problem --- I'll just
pretend that _R is _B_T, and it all happens magically. Is the same
true for the accent signs --- i.e., are U+0301 U+030B supposed to
ligature into a high-rising diacritic?

Is the mark for pharyngealized supposed to be U+02C1 or U+02E4? It's
hard to see how far over the base line these things are...

There don't seem to be characters with glyphs like the one John Wells
shows for upstep and downstep (i.e., superscript up and down arrows).
I noticed that U+2191 and U+2193 in the Arrows section are annotated
as having a different IPA semantics.

My current best display technology is MS Word 2000 with the font Arial
Unicode MS (which doesn't combine tone contours, I just tested) --- I
haven't found anything on UNIX that even attempts to place combining
diacritics correctly.

So Word is the only way I've been able to view the U+0361, COMBINING
DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE, which I want to use for a tie bar. However, it
shows it as connecting the two preceding glyphs, whereas the PDF files
from unicode.org seem to indicate that it should connect the glyphs
around it. Who's right, me or Bill?

Finally, it seems that the IPA chart wants the diacritic for no
audible release to be a spacing modifier letter --- but Unicode only
has the combining diacritic U+0321 with that sense. I could use U+321D
instead, but I'm not sure it would necessarily be designed to fit the
role. (It's a quine mark, whatever that is). (U+0020 U+0321 is another
possibility).

(I'm resigned to having to pick _n (and _0, _4, ...) out of the Super-
and Subscripts block, and _1, _2, _3 from Latin-1, but there's the
same caveat about design mismatch with the specific IPA superscript
letters).

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)

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