Hej!
From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 4:30 PM
Subject: More ASCII IPA suggestions ...
> As in X-SAMPA, all lowercase Roman letter stays. The big change is that
> anything that is represented in the IPA by a superscript is represented by
^
> plus the sign in question; thus ^h for aspiration, ^j for palatalization
and
> so on. When the superscripted character isn't ASCIIically available,
whatever
> is used for the character in its independent IPA use is used instead; eg
^G
> for velarization.
>
> I'm sure this scheme perserves a variety of aspects of CXS others find
> obnoxious. Tell me, and we can hopefully word out an improvement! The
below
> mostly reproduces the IPA, but I'm perfectly open to add more non-IPA
> distinctions. Anyway, this what I have ATM:
Senseful. x_x can confuse, especially, because "_" can also mean it's a
double articulation or diphtong.
> H\ voiceless epiglottal fricative (someone tell me what this is!)
> <\ voiced epiglottal fricative
> >\ epiglottal plosive (I want to change these two too - suggestions?)
> s\ voiceless alveopalatal fricative
> z\ voiced alveopalatal fricative
> s\! palatoalveolar click
> l\ alveolar lateral flap
> x\ simultaneous S and x
> 5 velarized alveolar lateral approximant
I'd like to have explained all of them if possible...
> Affricates and double articulations may optionally be inclosed in { } to
> disambiguate. Alternatively, affricate or double articulation may be
assumed,
> and clusters separated by '-'. Note that normal parentesis and square
brackets
> retain their IPA functions!
I'd even put diphtongs and/or glides into brackets, e.g. {Aj}, {aU}. A
hyphen would also make sense, especially if you don't like having brackets
in brackets (if you use square brackets, e.g. [Ek_s "sEmp@] like I use to)
> Vowels:
>
> | i y i\ u\ M u
> | I Y I\ U\ U
> | e 2 @\ 8 7 o
> | @
> | E 9 3 3\ V O
> | & 6
> | a &\ A Q
Huh? [M] was a voiceless [m], wasn't it?
> Superagementals:
>
> ' Primary stress
> , Secondary stress
> : Long
> ; Half-long
> ;\ Extra short
> . Syllable break
> | Minor (foot) group
> || Major (intonation) group
>
> For tone, I don't have any improvements on CXS to suggest ATM. However, if
'<'
> and '>' are freed up, I'm thinking they could be used to enclose tonal
info.
> Eg, [ma<TMH>] would be the syllable "ma" with an obnoxious extra
high-mid-high
> contour tone on. Since ! and ^ have been hijacked, it would also allow us
to
> use <!> and <^> for downstep and upstep.
Yay! No numbers from 1-5 anymore which don't make tone clear I think - at
least *I* never knew which one belongs to which tone. <TMH> etc. are a good
idea (although not nice looking and more at the Kirshenbaum end) because
English QUERTY keyboards AFAIK do not support directly typing ^, ´ and `
over letters, do they? The turned around ^ wouldn't be possible with a
QUERTZ/AZERTY keyboard either and needs Unicode as well. Other possibilities
to "enclose tonal info" could be using horizontal dashes: |TMH|, although
these could be easily mixed up with [I]'s and [l]'s, depending on the font
you're using. Well, in serif fonts this doesn't matter, but if you look at
non-serif fonts... rather difficult to tell apart when having only a quick
look.
>
> Diacritics:
>
> _0 voiceless (zero)
> _v voiced
> ^h aspirated
> _o more rounded (using lowercase lessens risk for confusion with _0)
> _c less rounded
> _+ advanced
> _- retracted
> ¨ centralized (did not seem to be any reason not get rid of the
underline)
> * mid-centralized
> = syllabic
> = non-syllabic (can't think of any symbol that need distinct syllabic
and
> non-syllabic diacritics!)
> ` rhoticity
> _¨ breathy voiced
The trema requires typing in an ALT+0000 combination. Not possible on
QUERTY/QUERTZ at least. And remember, English and other languages have no
<ä>, <ö> or <ü> (in Swedish <y> nevertheless) and thus do not require keys
for those letters. Btw, <ë>, <ÿ> require ALT combinations in every case on
English, German and French keyboards.
> _~ creaky voiced (these two increase similarity to the IPA)
> _N linguolabial
> ^w labialized
> ^j palatalized
> ^G velarized
> ^?\ pharyngealized
> _e velarized or pharyngealized (no, I don't know why we need this)
> ^r raised
> ^o lowered (these written as if superscripts to free up _o for more
rounded)
> _A advanced tongue root
> _q retracted tongue root
> _d dental
> _a apical
> _m laminal
> _s sublaminal
> ~ nasalized (notice that _~ is NOT a valid alternative for nasalization
in
> this scheme!)
> _n nasal release
> _l lateral release
> _` no audible release (similarish to IPA diacritic, and I hate brackets
used
> for non-brackety purposes)
And how is this scheme supposed to be called? JX-SAMPA (Johansson's
X-Sampa)? BTW, what does SAMPA stand for? X- is "extended" AFAIK.
Carsten Becker
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