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

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>
Date:Thursday, February 8, 2007, 20:13
T. A. McLeay skrev:
> On 08/02/07, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote: >> Eric Christopherson ikri': >> >> >> | And off-topic: Does anyone else think it would make >> | sense to P instead of p\ for the voiceless bilabial >> | fricative? The current P, the labiodental approximant, >> | already has an alternate symbol, v\, which looks more >> | like the actual IPA symbol. (Apologies if this has >> | already been addressed!) >> >> Address the proposal to Tristan. My personal opinion: >> that makes sense. I would support this amendment. > > I share Henrik's view on this. I've got over Kirsch. and > the rest enough that I expect p\ for ɸ,
I *read* p\ correctly, but when I want to *type* a voiceless bilabial fricative I always type P or F first -- each of them about 50% of the time, then I think "s**t its p\!", or I don't notice it at all. An unnecessary detour IMHO. Everybody agrees B is the best choice for the voiced bilabial fricative, and then the voiceless one *should* be U. Then it's only natural you slip and type F soometimes!
> although I always use v\ for ʋ.
Me too, and m\ for the labiodental nasal, but I'm repeating myself. Moreover I think b\ and p\ should be (re)assigned to ȸ U+0238 LATIN SMALL LETTER DB DIGRAPH and ȹ U+0239 LATIN SMALL LETTER QP DIGRAPH
> (Anyone who thinks that P for ʋ is outrageous should get > used to TIPA; it uses P for ʔ. I suppose at least they > *look* similar.)
I don't think the argument that one shouldn't mend something because something else is even worse broken is a very good one. You should get around to mend both if you can and if you need both. Now we can't mend TIPA(*), but we can and should mend CXS. We created it in order to get rid of various X-SAMPA annoyances or gaps, and if we progressively find other things annoying or wanting we should update CXS accordingly. Henrik's right we will need version numbers, but isn't the whole idea of having version numbers that things can be updated/revised with minimal confusion? Who would want to still use HTML 1.0? Surely backwards compatibility would be great, but we are working with a very limited set of atoms (the ASCII characters) to express the growing set of known possible speech sounds, so I don't think we can allow ourselves the luxury of eschewing reassignments -- in fact I think we *should* make them when they increase the internal symmetry (I'd be wary to say 'logic') of the system.
> (BTW: Isn't it about time CXS was deprecated anyway? Can > we send messages in Unicode happily enough on this list > nowadays?[*] If so, my view is that CXS shouldn't change > at all, and anyone unhappy with it should switch to > Unicode. Is there anyone who can't view/enter IPA/Unicode, > and can't reconfigure their computers to allow it?)
As others have said it is one thing to be able to read Unicode and another to be able to type them. In fact I use type my wiki and HTML pages using CXS and then convert them with Henrik's Perl module. (*) Rather than mending TIPA someone should develop a version of TeX which (a) uses UTF-8 natively (b) allows the user to define any escape sequence they damn well please for any Unicode character and (c) allows the user to switch between sets of such escapes at will.

Replies

Simen Rustad <simenru@...>
T. A. McLeay <relay@...>