Re: CHAT: XS vs. Kirshenbaum vs. Who-knows-what

Tristan McLeay wrote:

> ~ is so strongly associated with nasalisation I don't see the point in
> trying to usurp it for palatisation/pharyngealisation. Also with things
> like /x/ for a lateral fricative? Seems silly.
Inevitably any new system (if it's a recreate-from-scratch rather than
a patch job) **must** to do away with things that people are used to.
I'm sure we all agree this is inevitable. So then, it might as well do
away with [~] for nasalisation.

I've compromised with convention in a few places, but in order to be
reasonably elegant (meaning internal consistency, not consistency with
precedent) I can't follow convention everywhere.

We all make aesthetic judgements that other people are bound to
dislike, whether we're creating conlangs, spelling reforms,
transcription schemes, or poetry. By all means aesthetic preferences
can be discussed and debated, but your post comes across as a little
high-temperature in places. Probably this is unintented, and you are
merely being passionate. In the last analysis, trying to create a
completely logical scheme that everyone likes is as fruitless as
trying to divide a solar year into an equal number of lunar months.

I've mentioned in reply to Roger that [x] is no less logical a choice
than [K]. X-sampa also uses [F] and [J] for nasals. I find that far
less logical than most of your reservations about my scheme.

> > [{]  begin double articulation or affricate (when necessary)
>
> Is that prefix, a postfix, a roundfix or an infix?
The line you quote explicitely answers your question. Did you not
notice my use of the word "begin"? "Begin" means "at the beginning",
i.e. prefix, no? As in [{tS]

> This is only true for English, TMK, and only because it doesn't have much
> of a reason to change (whereas in AuE, at least one of [V] and [A:] have
> to change to show the long/short, so you might as well change both). I
> think you really should be distinguishing @\ from 8 from 3 from 3\. Or at
> the very least rounded unrounded pairs.
See my reply to Roger regarding proposed changes here.

> Roger Mills has alread shown the problem here. While ( and ) arranged like
> that have certain mnemonic properties that X-Sampa { and } lack, there's
> still going to be confusion and ( and ) are still grouping pairs. Grouping
> pairs should only ever be used for groupings, because that's what people
You cannot afford to be puritanical about the use of symbols when
you're talking about describing the IPA using ASCII. Something *has*
to give.

The problem with Xsampa [{] and [}] is that it's too easy to forget
which is which. However, I've arranged [(] and [)] to be symmetrical
on the vowel diagram and it is therefore easy to remember which is the
front vowel and which is the back vowel - the former bends towards the
front of the vowel diagram and the latter bends towards the back of
the vowel diagram.

> I also really dislike your use of c and q as vowels. I think it's insanity
> to try to use consonants as vowels and vowels as consonants, excepting
> when talking about a syllabic consonant. It'll do more harm than good.
Xsampa uses Q, V and M to represent vowels.

My choices are as logical as any other. I've used lowercase vs capital
consistently, where x-sampa uses 2 vs 9 and 7 vs V. Thus, when I use
consonants as vowels, I do not do so arbitrarily.

Furthermore, the shape of the letter 'c' is like an 'e' with a line
missing, and the shape of the letter 'Q' is like an 'O' with a line
added. This ought to be a pretty good mnemonic.

> I'd prefer inversion of primary and secondary; ['] looks enough like the
> primary IPA mark that confusion would ensue unless you had strong reasons
> (i.e. based on Sampa) to do it otherwise. Also, the fewer times you have
> to reach for shift the better :)
As I've said to Roger, I am unshakeable in my opinion that the symbol
for primary stress should involve more "strokes of the pen" than the
symbol for secondary stress, because it's spoken with louder volume.

Adrian.

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