Re: X-SAMPA { and }

En réponse à Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>:

>
> Perhaps a Conlang-Standard should be created? Call it CSPA and base it
> on
> X-SAMPA, Kirschenbaum, or whatever? Then if I were to write [!&46K2]
> then
> we know immediately it's [!&46K2] and not [fhueji] or whatever...
>
That's basically what I'm doing right now. I'm going directly from the IPA
(because we have to start somewhere) and try to design a scheme with two main
features: redundancy and controlled ambiguity. Redundancy means that for many
phones, there will be more than one way to transcribe them. This will be due to
the fact that I will use diacritics (in fact signs after a letter) to show for
instance the "corresponding fricative". So imagine that - marks "corresponding
fricative" (it probably won't, but I didn't choose which signs will correspond
to which diacritic). Then the voiced bilabial fricative will be marked /b-/,
even if maybe it will also be standardly marked as /B/. Just choose which one
you want, depending on your needs. Of course, this is just an idea (I took it
from the X-SAMPA use of \, but made it a little more consistent). Some
diacritics are already chosen: ! marks "click of the same place of
articulation", so that /p!/ is the bilabial click (could also be marked /b!/,
or /B!/ since you cannot voice or fricativise clicks anyway). I find this much
more easy to remember than /O\/, and at least it makes the whole thing
consistent, even though it makes it a little less like the IPA. Also, it makes
some transcriptions shorter (a nasalised bilabial click can simply be
transcribed as /m!/, though there will also be other ways to transcribe it).
The controlled ambiguity concerns two things. First, like the IPA, you're not
obliged to mark affricates with a linking mark between the two components (thus
you can write simply /tS/ instead of /t_S/) if they don't contrast with
clusters stops+fricative. Second, you can redefine some characters (maybe even
the diacritics) to mark things you need and that are not easily marked by the
scheme, on the condition that the thing they mark first is not needed for your
transcription, and that you show the redefinition at the beginning of the
document (with the formula like: x := y, or x:= "whatever you mean" to redefine
x). The scheme allows for redefinition, as long as it's consistently made, and
not too much.

The whole point of the scheme is that it gives an easier way to
transcribe "rare" phones that us conlangers are fond of :))), compared to other
schemes not specifically designed for us. The biggest difficulty I have right
now is that I don't want it to look to alien compared to SAMPA, so that people
won't have to relearn it all over again. Still, there will be some differences
since I start with the IPA itself.

Well, tell me what you think of it. I'm just doing that for fun, so please
discard the "you're losing your time" critics. I'm not more losing my time on
that than on making a language of which I'll probably invent only ten or twenty
words :))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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