Re: Questions about and suggestions for (C)XS

On Sat, 2004-08-07 at 10:30, Trebor Jung wrote:
> Why in CXS does one write [i\] and [u\] when [1] and [}] are still
> available? And the former are longer than the latter anyway :P
[{] and [}] were abandoned because they suck---many people have found
them hard to remember. ([u\] is rare enough that many people were happy
to use [}].) Also, they're grouping glyphs, but [&] and [u\] don't have
any grouping semantics so it's a bad choice.

In many fonts, [1] and [l] look very similar to the point of being
identical.

> And why is there a separate symbol for voiceless /w/? The distinction
> between /w/ and /W/ is rare in natlangs
So? What does the C in 'CXS' stand for? I can assure you that it's not
Canadian... :)

>  AFAIK, so why does it deserve its
> own symbol? After all, voiceless [m] and [n] f'rinstance don't have their
> own symbols and they're phonemic (AFAIK) in Welsh.
>
> So, besides getting rid of [W], I'd like to implement Danny's suggestion of
> having [H] replaced by [y\], and replacing [X\] with [H].
Go right ahead. If enough people use it that it seems it'd be most
convenient to include on my CXS chart, I will. My CXS chart is not meant
as a codification of CXS, but as a helpful resource to people trying to
communicate with us. I don't add suggestions to it unless they gain
enough popular use. [The exception was [&\], which I added on my own
initiative for a few reasons: I wanted a symbol for everything X-SAMPA
had one for; The sound is almost never used here; The only other
suggestion that I'd heard

(The only reason I'll consider a symbol to be got rid of is if it gets
used with a different meaning. Simply not using it might just mean that
the concept it expresses, while useful, is not often needed.)

> Do any languages have phonemic /h\/? If not, I think we should just use
> [h_v], and use [h\] for something else.
What? I can't see any other use for it. Try using it. (Incidentally,
people who (ab)use voice for tenseness would lose the possibility for
distinguishing between a lax voiced, tense voiced, lax unvoiced and
tense unvoiced glottal fricatives. Probably only useful in close
phonetic representations of some conlang, but it's still worth
considering...)

--
Tristan <kesuari@...>

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