Re: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore (was: phonetics by guesswork)

Philippe Caquant scripsit:

> Then I would look with interest to the
> scientific definition of the phoneme, to its IPA
> representation, and to the computer code I am supposed
> to use, supposing I needed it.
Note that what the IPA represents are phones (sounds), not phonemes
(sounds that are distinct with respect to some particular language).
The IPA letters can also be co-opted for phonemic representation,
but need not be used as strictly.  Thus French "t" is generally
/t/ in phonemic notation rather than /t_d/, although its
precise phonetic representation is [t_d].

> About the use of diacritics (mentioned in other
> messages): I wonder how the chart designers decided
> when a phoneme has to be considered as a variant (thus
> using diacritics) and when it is a phoneme of its own,
In general, a diacritic is employed if the distinction is not phonemic
in any known language.  There are exceptions to this: aspiration and
dentalness are phonemic in certain languages, but the conventions for
them are too well-established to change now.

--
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  jcowan@reutershealth.com
"'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull
as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the
large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will
jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'"
        --the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake