Re: OT: Phonetics (IPA)

On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 10:47:25PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Actually, *this* version of IPA makes affricates not only easy to write,
> but doesn't limit people by assigning affricates to single symbols, which
> creates trouble when you come up with an affricate that doesn't have
> already a symbol for it (take a [gG] affricate for instance. Does the
> version of IPA you refer to have a symbol for it?).
Many linguists use slightly modified versions of the IPA, Christophe,
and many others who do use the standard are nevertheless used to
the variation and don't tend to get annoyed, even when the former
crowd does consist of Americans :).  Part of the reason for this
is the history - American linguists were in the field cataloguing
native American languages before the IPA was defined, and they came
up with their own symbols.

An excellent reference for the ways various phonetic symbols
have been/are used in different traditions - including the IPA,
of course, which has itself undergone several revisions over time
- is Pullum/Ladusaw's _Phonetic_Symbol_Guide_, available for <= $20
at Amazon.

In any case, the "version of the IPA" with the hacek isn't really a
version of the IPA, nor is it a completely separate system.  Its relationship
to the IPA is the same as that between our standard conlang system
and standard X-SAMPA: mostly identical with some exchanges and substitutions.
There is no functional difference in expressivity.  Yes, it uses č
(c with hacek) for /t⁀ʃ/ (/t_S/), substituting one symbol for two tied ones;
but it also uses /š/ for /ʃ/ (/S/), a case of simply substituting a single
symbol for another.   Meanwhile, the rest of the IPA is still available to
them, so /g⁀ɣ/ (/g_G/) would be written exactly like that.

There are other sets of substitutions that tend to go along with the use
of the hacek forms.  One in particular is rather problematic for
intercommunication with the standard IPA since it changes the meaning
of symbols rather than just introducing new ones: /ü/ (u with diaresis) is
used for /y/, freeing up /y/ to be used for /j/, which is more natural to
English-speakers.  In some cases the now-available /j/ is used for /d⁀ʒ/
(/d_Z/);  in other cases, it's used for just /ʒ/ (/Z/) and /ǰ/ (j with hacek)
is used for /d⁀ʒ/ (/d_Z/).

> It's true that affricates and clusters are different things. A cluster is a
> succession of two phones with a short period in between for the change of
> geometry of the aural apparatus. An affricate is a single phone which
> starts at one geometry and ends up at another, with the change lasting for
> the *whole* duration of the phone, instead of being restricted to a very
> short period between two sustained periods. This makes affricates slightly
> different from clusters. But at the same time, most people don't make the
> difference, and the difference, at a normal speed of speech, is indeed
> minimal. To me, the difference between "catch it" and "cat shit" is more a
> matter of intonation than a matter of affricate vs. cluster. And I'm
> supposed to have a keen ear when it comes to distinguishing sounds.
If you can actually comprehend spoken Maggel, then you must have a keen
ear indeed. :)

-Mark