Re: C-IPA underlying principles and methods

En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

>
> Rule one of communication: if your audience ever misunderstands you,
> it's your fault for not expressing yourself properly.
Not true. The rule one of communication is that you have to be two to
communicate, and the listener mustn't be passive (otherwise it's no
communication after all). You can't always blame misunderstandings on the
speaker.

 After all: is
> the
> point of communication to hear/see your own voice/writing, or to let
> others know your thoughts? (I actually won an argument yesterday with
> that rule with someone who you *never* win an argument with.)
>
He was really bad then, because you would never have with me, since it is *not*
rule one of communication. And I know that very well, having had communication
courses during my time in school.

>
>  > which can be used behind any meaningful character to put it in the
                                             ^^^^^^^^^

>  > place, manner or whatever of articulation *without changing its
> other
>  > parameters*. Basically those diacritics are shortcuts to move in
> the
>  > IPA tables.
>
> In one sentence, you say that [s+] should be an unvoiced dental
> sibilant
> fricative (i.e. [s_d]), and in the very next, you say that [s+] should
> be an unvoiced dental non-sibilant fricative (i.e. [T]).
Nope. Where did I refer to actual sounds? Never. I made it clear that I was
referring to *characters*. And what's the definition of the s character in IPA?
It's a "voiceless alveolar fricative". Nothing is said about it being sibilant
or not. So what I say is right: if you advance it to dental position, you get
a "voiceless dental fricative" (you see, only PoA has changed), which is the
definition of the IPA theta. You keep on trying to apply the diacritics to
sounds when I made it clear that they applied to *characters*. As I said and
repeated: C-IPA is a transliteration of the IPA and nothing else. So it's just
logical that everything I say applies only to characters, rather than actual
sounds. There again, I was perfectly clear and you just overlooked what I said.

 I think you
> should be able to agree with me that it wasn't clear.
I completely disagree, since I never referred to "sounds" but only
to "characters", unambiguously characters of the IPA since it's what we are
talking about. Now, maybe the IPA itself is ambiguous, but that's not my job
to "correct" it (I made that clear too).

 Emphasising that
> it doesn't change its other parameters almost certainly got rid of at
> least some unambiguity, but the entire bolded phrase was a mistake.
>
It was not. You just overlooked the word "character". If I had wanted to talk
about sounds, I would have used the word "sound", or "phone", but not the
word "character". Pardon me for being precise.

> Oh, and what is [t+]? [p], labio-dental, or [t_d]? Your definition of
> moving within the tables makes it ambiguously either lab.-dent. or
> dent.
It would be the stop equivalent of [T]. Now in this case maybe there's no
difference between [t+] and X-SAMPA [t_d], but since there's no special
character for a dental t in IPA the [t+] notation needn't be used.

> (there being a header but no column for dentals, and if [s+]=deantl,
> why
> shouldn't [t+]?---but there's no IPA column for it, and you don't fix
> the mistakes of the IPA). Your definition that they move characters
> would make it (unambigously) [p].
You misread everything I wrote on purpose. I made it clear that + advances
*one* rank only. And it is productive. So [t+] is indeed dental. And if people
want to use it as such, so be it. But when I said I wasn't trying to fix the
IPA, I was only saying that: I was not *trying*. If my scheme allows for more
things than the IPA proposes, so be it. But I don't *try* to achieve that. You
keep on misreading me on purpose for things that are perfectly clear. Stop
trying to guess a hidden meaning in my words and begin reading them.

>
> And is [R+] impossible or a palatal trill?
>
Impossible, unambiguously. Having productive rules doesn't mean all outcomes
are useable. It just means that all possible outcomes can be rendered in a way
or another. Again, it's a system of rules to *transliterate* the IPA into
ASCII. And as such, you're supposed to go from the IPA form and *transliterate*
it. C-IPA has no purpose in replacing the IPA itself.

>
> Yes it is. The POA is at the dot, not where the character is, because
> sometimes two sounds are articulated at the same point with
> roundedness
> being the only distinction. It's not my fault (nor is it yours) that
> [@]
> and [6] are either unmarked for rounding or unrounded (I'm not sure
> which).
>
Which is the reason why [@}] cannot refer to X-SAMPA [3]. Having [@}] referring
to X-SAMPA [3] would mean changing two things (on the IPA definition of the
character) by one diacritic, and it's not possible by definition. On the other
hand, I just checked and [6] *is* defined for roundedness: it's unrounded by
definition. So [@}] is not valid either (or not strictly at least. Since I said
C-IPA is modular, you can define the [@}] sequence to mean X-SAMPA [6]). But [&-
] is (C-IPA [&] - or IPA ae-ligature - is "almost fully open front unrounded
vowel", and IPA turned a is "almost fully open central unrounded vowel". Since -
 for vowel jumps back one rank in frontness/backness (from front to central and
from central to back), [&-] is correct and unambiguous.

>
> Okay, that's fully open to interpretation (I can understand that [i}]
> could unambiguously be [e] because [I] moves more towards the centre
> than [e], so it would be [i}-] (I think)
Nope, because [I] isn't central (and in C-IPA it's [I] anyway. Remember the
rule that IPA small capitals become C-IPA capitals, or did you overlook it
too?). [i}-] would be unambiguously X-SAMPA [@\] (not [I\] because it's not
officially part of the IPA, and would oblige one diacritic to mean two changes
in the definition of the character, and anyway [I-] would render it just as
well if you really want it - another advantage of having productive rules: if
the IPA is modified or updated, C-IPA will be easy to adapt to the new form.
You can't say the same from other schemes). By the way, that's also why I
wanted a symbol for "laxness", but nobody has proposed me one yet, just like
the symbol for roundedness and the one for unroundedness I asked for (I think
they will be ) and ( respectively anyway, with ^) and ^( the IPA
diacritics "more rounded" and "less rounded" respectively. So now it's easy to
write X-SAMPA [V] as [O(] or [o}(]).

, but saying that [a{] should
> be
> [E] is just asking for confusion,
Why? There's no dot on the line in this case, so [&] really isn't exactly
between [a] and [E].

 and if you don't think it is, you're
> being stubborn because it has caused confusion.)
>
Says the one who stubbornly refuses to read me and keeps on overlooking half of
my posts. As I said, communication requires two active persons. I can't help if
my audience refuses to play the part it should. Eamon understood me from the
very beginning. This is proof enough that when you actually read what I wrote
instead of putting in words that I never uttered, you cannot make

It has caused confusion only because you keep on wanting to discuss about
phones when I'm only talking about IPA characters and their definition *in the
IPA* (it's the only thing I'm talking about). Since you try to read my posts
with the wrong frame of reference (and I had been quite clear what I was
talking about. After all, when I say I present a "transliteration of the IPA",
it sounds quite logical that I'm only referring to the IPA characters), you
can't blame me for being unclear.

Now, if you have no better critics than that, I suggest you don't bother
replying. C-IPA is a project I did for fun only, and I don't intend to have a
flamewar over it or over the fact whether I was clear enough or not or whether
the speaker is sole responsible for the listener's understanding or not. I was
presenting the project so that people could show me inconsistencies (according
to its purpose, principles and frame of reference, not according to your own
prejudice on how such a system "should" work) and help me find how to map the
rest of the characters available. But I don't care about people who discuss in
terms of actual phones when I was discussing unambiguously in terms of IPA
characters (I don't care that [s] is sibilant and [T] is not. Sibilance is not
indicated in the definition of the IPA character. It may be a weakness of the
IPA, but it's not my problem. Dental s is [s^[] in C-IPA anyway - exactly the
equivalent of X-SAMPA [s_d]. Something marked with a diacritic in IPA is marked
with the transliteration of that diacritic (with ^) in C-IPA. Here again, you
confuse the C-IPA transliteration of the IPA diacritics with the specific C-IPA
diacritics, a distinction I specifically made in my first mail too -).

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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