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

Hi!

René Uittenbogaard writes:
> Somewhat off-topic:
>
> Henrik's cxs/ipa page (http://www.theiling.de/ipa/) says:
>
> > Note 2: The schwa, @, does not seem to be defined to be rounded or
> > unrounded in IPA as the chart gives the letter in the very center.
> > We need a conlang that distinguishes these two to force IPA to include
> > both variants (you can write e_x and 2_x to indicate the two variants,
> > though).
>
> I have always been wondering whether /@_c/ and /@_O/ wouldn't be
> better choices to write down these variants.
Although those mean 'less rounded' and 'more rounded', resp.,
suggesting a specification wrt. to roundedness exists, which the
symbol /@/ lacks.  To me, it feels like 'undef-1' vs. 'undef+1', if
you can read Perl. :-)

Another reason I wrote the above is that the schwa was probably meant
to be a phone*m*ic symbol, not a precise phonetic one, therefore
lacking the roundedness specification.  So using /e/ or /2/ as the
base letter seems to me as more canonical in phone*t*ic environments,
since these symbols do specify roundedness.  E.g. for German, /@/ ~
[e_x] and for French, /@/ ~ [2_x], I think.

Of course, that's probably a matter of taste.

**Henrik