Re: Idea for a new ASCII-IPA scheme

On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:02:11 -0500, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

>John Cowan wrote:
>> "&" doesn't seem so arbitrary to me.
>
>Well, certainly no more arbitrary than the IPA's use of ash.  My point
>was that the CB system is the best system in existence for going from
>IPA to ASCII.  Every other system is effectively a unique system based
>loosely on IPA.  Granted, the bottom of & does look a  little like an a,
>but you really have to stretch the imagination to see an e or an
>epsilon.  And what about the /O/ - that looks nothing like the IPA
>symbol, while CB /;c/ means "rotated c", which does bear a very close
>resemblance to the open o.
Where can I find a description of the CB system?

I've made a few corrections and improvements to my new system, which I'm
calling "Kolagian Phonetic Alphabet" or KPA, and put the chart along with
some comments on its origins and differences from SAMPA up on my web =
site:

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/kpa.html

I'm not entirely satisfied with it yet, especially some of the vowels and
diacritics, but I'm finding it more comfortable than the alternatives I'm
familiar with. Tones are a bit awkward, but none of the ASCII-IPA systems
I've seen handles tones well, and I'll probably end up using accented
vowels in HTML to indicate tones in any case (although it would be
convenient to have an ASCII-only equivalent).

It's possible to use the * in KPA to represent [O] as [c*], [V] as [v*],
[L] as [y*], and so on, or to use ) for ligatures like [ae)], [oe)], =
[lZ)].
So there is some redundancy in KPA (two different ways of writing the =
same
IPA character), but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd probably tend
to use the more recognizable [oe)] when writing to a list like Conlang, =
and
reserve [$] for use on web pages, where I can easily link to the KPA =
page.

Specific questions:

I originally had u" and o" for the back unrounded vowels, but I changed =
u"
to represent a high central rounded vowel (formerly u-), since I wanted =
to
reserve {-} for other purposes (syllable division, etc.) and added U" for
the high back unrounded vowel (influenced by Miguel Carrasquer's system).
However, other systems have o" for the slashed o, which makes sense if =
you
read it as o-umlaut. I like the symmetry of my current system, but [o"]
seems preferable to [%], and I could always use the SAMPA [8] for my
current [o"]. Any preferences?

The tone notation could use some work. I experimented with using / and \
for rising and falling pitches (which is why I used " where SAMPA uses =
\),
but that conflicts with the use of / / for phonemic transcription. My
current system uses < and >, which might be needed as brackets, but I =
can't
think of a better notation for upstep and downstep with the characters
available. If anyone needs < and > for brackets, would something like <[
... ]> suffice?

Although ^~ would be more logical for the nasal diacritic, and ~ for the
velarized/pharyngealized diacritic, the convenience of ~ and its frequent
use in other systems as a nasal diacritic argue in favor of keeping it as=
 a
nasal diacritic.

I've tried to avoid ambiguities, but with a limited set of characters it
isn't easy to be unambiguous and readable at the same time. I use the =
same
character ( for both implosives and the extra-short diacritic. I figured
the extra-short diacritic would mainly be used for vowels, and a language
with implosive vowels would be a bit exotic (to say the least). Does =
anyone
know of a language that needs a way to represent extra-short consonants?

--
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin