CONTINUED: Re: Additional diacritics (was: Phonological equivalent of...)

@$#%&! Flurry truncated my mail! I've changed my
subscription to gmail, since I found their mobile version to
be reasonable.

So here is a repost with restored ending:

Well I guess the one and only reason I thought first of _h_!
is that X-SAMPA and CXS by tradition uses only postposed
diacritics, and the _! to my mind is a diacritic on the _h.
Of course _!_h would work as well if we agree on it, but
note that X-SAMPA uses even the catchall backslash as a
postposed diacritic, which CXS has never changed, though the
subject has been up. The notation _!h would be shorter, but
I'm not sure I want that. I find myself using "not" in Perl
because I find ! too inconspicious -- I simply don't see it
when I read something like if($x && !$y) but != and !~ work
better, and since I have the same visibility problem with |
in the midst of a regex it must be something with the
salience of thin verticals. :-/

As for the issue of the desirability of CXS being a superset
of X-SAMPA I'm with Mark and Herman. The redefinition of &
was one of the original and most desired changes, perhaps
*the* first and most desired change, and it broke any notion
of CXS being a superset of X-SAMPA right from the start. I
agree fully with Mark:

|> The only reason CXS exists is that we were dissatisfied,
|> as a group, with X-SAMPA. We could just use X-SAMPA and
|> be done with it, but as long as we have our own version,
|> there's no reason not to extend it and even change it.
|> Arbitrary changes should be avoided, of course, but
|> logical ones should be adopted if there's enough support.

I might add that I think we should not hesitate also to add
symbols for sounds not (yet) recognized by the IPA, at
least if there is a reasonably agreed-upon symbol for them
in Unicode.

As for P for the voiceless bilabial fricative and v\ for
labiondental continuant I agree fully. While we're at it we
should also change the labiodental nasal to m\ and reassign
F as an alternative to P for the voiceless bilabial
fricative! I 'instinctively' write P half of the time and F
half of the time for the fricative, but never p\, of which I
have to actively remind myself.

AFAIK both v\ and m\ are already in actual use, so they
should be recognized whether or not the p\ > P change is
recognized. Henrik's converter doesn't recognize m\ as an
alternative to F ATM. Could that be changed?

Let me also reiterate my old additions/changes proposals:

w\ as an alternative for a bilabial approximant B_o. I have
on occasion used Greek lowercase psi for it in typeset text.

8\ as an alternative for 8_+_w. The Swedish Dialect Alphabet
has a symbol for this which IPA has an idee fixe to deny. It
isn't in Unicode, but I've on occasion used Greek lowercase
omega for it.

4\ onstead of l\ for the alveolar lateral flap, because...

d\ l\ n\ t\ should be used for alveopalatal sounds
analoguously to s\ and z\. YR Chao proposed the signs over
50 years ago, but the IPA continues to deny them although
they occur in Sino-Tibetan languages. IPA continues to deny
them, but the signs are in Unicode.

4\` analogously for the retroflex lateral flap.

My ExtCXS proposal will have to wait till tomorrow, as I'm
busy today.

 > --- Forwarded Message --- Date: 2007-02-07 14:04:00.0
 > From: Conlang Mailing List URL:
 > http://archives.conlang.info/wu/teirsun/cualtuekuan.html
 > Subject: Re: Additional diacritics (was: Phonological
 > equivalent of...) (Eric Christopherson, Feb 7 '07, 22:02)
 > ---
 >
 > On Feb 6, 2007, at 2:03 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
 > > Seconded. At least in CXS, as it is running out of
 > > underscore+character combinations anyway. We can then
 > > easily accomodate wathever symbols (Ext)IPA comes up
 > > with analogously to the explicit unaspirated symbol John
 > > mentioned. I suggest _! since that symbol is not yet
 > > taken in CXS and it recalls the C and Perl negation
 > > operator. Too bad Unicode not yet has any raised
 > > exclamation mark, and the raised not sign is taken for
 > > No audible release -- _} in CXS.[snip] Hence I propose
 > > _h_! for Unaspirated and _z for explicitly alveolar --
 > > the latter because fricatives are the only MOA where the
 > > IPA table explicitly distinguishes dental, alveolar and
 > > palatoalveolar, and z looks at least somewhat similar to
 > > an equals sign!
 >
 > Out of curiosity, why not _!_h or _!h, to better match C
 > and Perl?
 >
 > And off-topic: Does anyone else think it would make sense
 > to P instead of p\ for the voiceless bilabial fricative?
 > The current P, the labiodental approximant, already has an
 > alternate symbol, v\, which looks more like the actual IPA
 > symbol. (Apologies if this has already been addressed!)
--

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)