Re: sibilants
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, August 19, 2008, 14:54 |
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On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 12:07 PM, David McCann <david@...> wrote:
> I don't care about all this #!*$ CXS stuff,
Oookay. I don't think the tone is necessary. CXS may seem
superfluous to you, but it does have the advantage of being easy to
type, even for those of us who rarely have cause to enter IPA symbols
outside of email to this very list...
> hasn't the IPA got too many symbols already? e.g. pairs that are
> never contrasted, like ɘ/ə, ɱ/m.
Those extra symbols allow for greater precision when providing a
phonetic transcription out of context, which, coincidentally, happens
a lot with conlangs, where we're not just transliterating phonemic
writing systems or presenting transcribed speech to someone familiar
with the language. Obviously you can't have enough symbols to
represent every possible articulation precisely, but where there are
obvious distinctions to be made, creating obvious gaps in the IPA, it
makes sense to fill those gaps.
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>