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

On 2/9/07, Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...> wrote:

    That was me and it was a typo for P!
>


Ah, that explains it.  I thought it might be a typo, but people seemed to be
taking it as written; hence my confusion.

I did recall that you have CP, but Im no more likely to assume a typo on
that basis, since your messages don't usually have any more typos than, say,
mine - which is either a testament to your persistence or an acknowledgment
that those of us with no such excuse are still sloppy typists.  Or perhaps
both. Also, I thought the quote was from Tristan.

     the spellchecker was set not to mark single-letter words. I have
> changed that setting now! :-)
>

That would not seem likely to help in this instance, since P is not a word.
:)


    my better hand -- or at least more nimble, as it isn't very strong --
> sits on my worse arm. and vice versa.
>

Well, that was poor planning on your part... :\


    * p\ for the voiceless bilabial fricative  (IPA ?, current CXS p\)
>     * v\ for the labiodental approximant    (IPA ?, current CXS P with v\
> as alternate)
>     * m\ for the labiodental nasal             (IPA ?, current CXS F)
>     * b\ as alternative to B                      (IPA ß, voiced bilabial
> fricative)
>     * P and F as alternatives for any of p\ v\ m\
>
>     That's not my preference,
>


Nor mine.  I've added the current CXS to your list above, and I find some of
the choices quite odd.  I would like CXS to be something I can use without
having to refer back to the chart constantly, and these little
illogicalities make that quite difficult.

If IPA beta is represented by B, then IPA phi should be P.  The parallel is
too compelling to ignore.  That leaves v\ as the only symbol for IPA ʋ (is
that an upsilon?), but doesn't leave any sound without a symbol.  So it's a
relatively harmless change that does much for consistency.

(One could, of course, argue that B should instead represent IPA small-cap B
[current CXS B\], by analogy with the other small-cap IPA symbols that are
represented by the corresponding simple uppercase letter in CXS, such as I
and Y.  But that way lie sweeping changes, since for consistency along those
lines all of G\, H\, L\, N\, and R\ would need to lose their backslashes,
perhaps swapping places with their current counterparts...)

Contrariwise, one might suppose that F and V were better than P and B here..
but V is far too frequent in its representation of cardinal vowel 14.

On the other hand, the use of F for the nasal is, to me, one of the most
baffling of the current symbols.  I find m\ much more legible.  Again,
there's an analogical argument for M instead, but that would require finding
a new symbol for unrounded u.  If we were to go that route, I'd suggest w\.

But I'm not proposing any such domino-effect changes.  I simply support the
use of P for the bilabial fricative and m\ (currently unused in CXS) as an
alternative symbol for F.

-- 
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>