Re: CXS changes

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 12:44:40 +1100, Tristan Mc Leay
<conlang@...> wrote:

>However: For those people who care:
>
>    - If there is an essentially unanamous decision to swap <J\> and
>      <j\>, I will do it.
>    - If however anyone provides a reasonable argument against it, I
>      would prefer considerable use (by posts, not by people). I will
>      ignore any arguments like 'I would prefer we changed <!> into
>      <~>'; to me that means you don't care about the issue at hand (try
>      and get others to your cause). Of course I've been offlist for a
>      while so I don't know what the current situation is but when I get
>      back to having a bit of time, I'll look into it...
>    - If anyone can think of a replacement symbol for one of them, and
>      then have <J\> and <j\> as synonyms, that's my preferred choice in
>      my role as maintainer of CXS. This would probably be the same idea
>      as how <t_s> and <ts)> are synonyms, but no-one ever uses <t_s>
>      anymore and I might as well remove it from my chart now that <ts)>
>      has been so successful. (Unless I've forgotten anyone?)
>
>Email me, either onlist or privately at cxs-vote@thecartographers.net,
>with your opinion if you have one. So far I assume that Jan, Yitzik and
>Philip Newton are all in favor of the swap, and that J. 'Mach' Wust
>isn't for it---but can I point out that although CXS is based on X-Sampa
>which is based on the IPA, CXS is motivated more by
>ease-of-use-and-memorisation, independent of the IPA. Does that affect
>your objection, Mach?
I understand it as a way of using IPA without having the IPA signs
available. I assume that all the people who use CXS know IPA previously.

If you don't feel obliged to follow (X-)Sampa, then you could also get rid
of the strange use of |J| for a nasal sound and use |n\| instead. I believe
the only reason for that peculiar use of |J| is that by the time it was
introduced, there wasn't any general modifier sign yet as we now have with
|\|. Another instance of such an unintuitive assignment is |H| for a sound
that isn't related at all to an aspiration. I'd also count the numbers as
samples of extremely unintuitive assignments.

I'd say before we get rid of assymetries, we should get rid of the very
unintuitive assignments of the above type. Anyway, there's not a great deal
of symmetry in the system, since the |\| can have any meaning.

And your argument that swapping around two sounds so close to each other
like [J\] and [j\] would create confusion is also very important, I think.

For the biggest part, however, CXS work very well.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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