Re: Questions about and suggestions for (C)XS

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 20:30:33 -0400, Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> 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
Do you have any idea how hard it is to distinguish between [l] and [1] in a
monospace font? It's a one-pixel difference. And, recall that [{] was
replaced with [&] in CXS. The curly brackets are rather awkward, not easily
distinguishable, and share space with the square brackets, which together
make them rather undesirable symbols. Finally, CXS is designed for maximum
readability, not for brevity.

>And why is there a separate symbol for voiceless /w/? The distinction
>between /w/ and /W/ is rare in natlangs 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.
But [m_0 n_0] are rare phonemes, period. And like someone else said, [W] is
a fricative, not an approximate. Anyway, if you don't have a suggestion for
a better use of [W], why suggest discontinuing use of it? Your next
suggestions make more sense in that way:

>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].
Well, [X\] fits a pattern of [x X X\].

>Do any languages have phonemic /h\/? If not, I think we should just use
>[h_v], and use [h\] for something else. And do any languages have phonemic
>epiglottal phonemes?
Hebrew and Arabic come off the top of my head. But maybe I'm thinking glottal.

Ben

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