Re: C-IPA

En réponse à Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>:

>
> You were, but certainly its a drawback for a transliteration scheme not
> to keep
> the value of a grapheme when it occurs in both the source and target
> character
> set?
Well, in this case I was influenced by KPA, which does the same, and nobody
finds it a drawback :)) .

 (In this case, the benefits of turning "!" into a diacritic is
> probably
> greater than the drawback, but that's a question of weighing the pros
> and cons
> in a specific case, not something of principle.)
>
But C-IPA is all about principles ;))) . That's what's making it different from
other transliteration schemes. If you simply want to weigh the pros and cons, X-
SAMPA is just good enough ;)) .

>
> Yep, but surely it doesn't hurt if other signs to so too, where
> practical? The
> primary stress sign is a case in point.
>
True, and this one is taken as ' indeed, just like secondary stress is taken
as , . But this has no character of necessity here, just personal dislike
against X-SAMPA " and % ;))) . ? was another example, but like Joe suggested,
h| works as well and it frees ?, which helps me with a little problem I had.
Now C-IPA has distinct diacritics for implosives and ejectives (Kirshenbaum
doesn't make a distinction, but all other ASCII-IPA schemes and IPA itself do,
so I felt like I had to do so too, whether it was meaningful or not - is it?
Are there languages with voiced ejectives or voiceless implosives? -). In some
way I find it a bit embarassing not to have ? for the glottal stop, but until I
find a better diacritic for implosives, it will have to do. For some reason, I
mind less that ! doesn't have the meaning it has in IPA than ? ;))) .

>
> There's no reason it'd make everything much longer; I did suggest
> removing the
> C-IPA characteristics as a class, only the particular ones [! |].
>
That would break the unity of the C-IPA diacritics and lose too much
modularity :(( .

>
> Naturally not in the base form of C-IPA, just like [th] isn't acceptable
> for
> aspirated "t" in base IPA. I was merely pointing out how one could
> simply the
> system used for a specific language.
>
That's what modularity of C-IPA is for. To allow for language-specific (and
person-specific ;)) ) schemes whithout "breaking" the rules. So you can do as
you say indeed. You just have to always make it clear by beginning with a
series of X := Y lines, with X being the character sequence you apply the
meaning of the pure C-IPA Y sequence. In your case, you'd probably have two
lines:

redef ! := t!
redef | := t+!

The "redef" makes it clear that ! and |'s original meanings are overridden by
your definition (a line defining a character which has not been defined before
must normally begin with a "def", but you may omit it since there's no
ambiguity). For a click-heavy language, this is a very good idea, as long as
you *never* use ! and | for their original meaning. Still, I recommend keeping
redefinitions to a minimum. Definitions are fine, but redefinitions play havoc
with the C-IPA kernel (and now I'm really looking like a TeX geek ;)))) ) by
making things difficult to read. Unless you have a very good reason to apply
them (Describing !Xu~ is good enough ;))) ), you shouldn't. After all, with the
correct redefinitions, you can transform C-IPA into X-SAMPA, Kirshenbaum or KPA
or whatever ASCII-IPA you want! ;)))) That's not quite what C-IPA is for ;) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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