Re: Bantoid conlang - phonology

Adam Walker wrote:

> Sf is a sound which occurs in Shona.  It is a sort of
> simutaneous articulation of /f/ and a post-alveolar
> sibilant articulated about halfway between my /s/ and
> my /S/.
>
> |tf| is a sort of affricate with the stop portion
> being a lamino-labial stop and the fricative protion
> being /T/.
>
> The other two are the voiced counterparts of said.
>
> Ideas on how to represent these sounds in IPA and
> X-Sampa or whatever we're using now?
The "lamino-labial" stop might be what's called "linguolabial". The mark
for this is [_N] in X-SAMPA, and a character called "subscript seagull"
in IPA (because it must have reminded whoever gave it that name of a
stylized drawing of seagull wings). Strangely, "subscript seagull" is
used with the letters for _alveolar_ sounds (not bilabial as you might
expect). The example word in the IPA handbook is Tangoa [t_Net_Ne]
"butterfly". I've never heard any recordings of Tangoa, so I don't know
exactly what that sounds like.

So then your "tf" would be written /t_NT/ in X-SAMPA. If your email
software can handle Unicode, the IPA version is /t̼θ/, which looks much
nicer. But since not everyone has Unicode-friendly email software yet,
we're stuck with the ugly X-SAMPA or non-standard alternatives. In APA
(http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/APA.html), which is what I use to type
IPA symbols on the keyboard, it would be /t_mT/. At least the /_m/ looks
more like the IPA symbol. In the Kolagian Phonetic Alphabet, or KPA
(http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/kpa.html), it's also represented as /t_mT/.

As far as "sf", there isn't a symbol for something between /s/ and /S/;
you'll either have to pick one or the other, or use the "advanced" or
"retracted" diacritics. Since /s/ with the "retracted" diacritic usually
just means "alveolar /s/", using /S/ with the "advanced" diacritic (a
small plus sign under the letter) would be better. But because the /S/
goes below the line, the descender runs into the plus sign. The X-SAMPA
for the "advanced" diacritic is /_+/, which is unexpectedly logical.
This is also the symbol I use in APA and KPA. Then you'd use the tie bar
/_/ to join the /f/ and the /S_+/ to end up with something like /f_S_+/
or /S_+_f/. I use /^^/ for the tie bar in APA, and KPA uses the curly
braces { } around the two letters that are joined.

Reply