Re: CB Notation [was: glottals]

Quoting Barbara Barrett <barbarabarrett@...>:

> Andreas asked;
> > Quoting Barbara Barrett <barbarabarrett@...>:
> >
> > > Barbara Babbled;
> <snip>
> > > replace post volic [t] with [?] so "hot" becomes /h;@?/ and "butter"
> becomes
> > > /b;v?3:/
>
>
> > Andreas asked;
> > What's the semicolon meaning here?
>
> Barbara Burbbles,
>
> it's an instuction that means "visualise upside down".
Semicolon for _upside down_? That would take some getting used to!

> I use the
> Coutts-Barrett system (natch, as one of its co-devisors)
Fair enough. It's always helpful, tho, to point out when one's using something
other than CXS/X-SAMPA, the de facto standard herearounds.

> and in that system
> the syntax is;
>  <visulisation inscuction>PHONEME<articulation instuction>
> so /;v/ is v upside down, the IPA letter for the "weak u" vowel.
> When the older ASCII/IPA systems were devised the @ symbol was made on a
> 16x8 pixel grid and looked rather like a backwards "e", so it made sense to
> use it (as the closest match) for the shwa, however modern screen reolutions
> mean in most fonts it is a round "a" (or alpha) surounded by an open
> circle/spiral and the round "a" (or alpha) is the IPA for the low back
> rounded, or "broad a" sound so it made sense to us to use the @ for it as it
> looks much more like an alpha nowadays than a shwa (our "closest match" shwa
> by the way is /6/ although /;e/ is acceptable in the CB notation) the /;@/
> is therefore the back rounded weak broad "o" which in IPA is the alpha
> upside down.
Must be using a non-modern screen resolution (1024x768), since on my
system '@' looks nothing like an alpha. Not much like a schwa either, tho.

                                                       Andreas

> My copy of the full system is, alas, on a dead hard drive, and Robert Coutts
> has buggered off to parts unknown for the time being, but it'll see the
> light of day eventually. I think it'll be useful for conlangers as it covers
> "disordered speech" (such as a nasal hiss) and "imagined sounds" (auditory
> illusions) such as voiceless trills (implosive and explosive - like a cat's
> purr!) and so might cover a lot of "alien" phonemes ;-)
>
> I'll be putting up a website (I hope) around the end of the summer, and I'll
> need to have had data-recovery done on the old hard disk by then, so a full
> printable PDF of the CB system will be made available on the web (fingers
> crossed) ;-)
>
> Barbara
>

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