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Re: Questions about Hungarian

From:Racsko Tamas <tracsko@...>
Date:Sunday, May 2, 2004, 13:45
On 01 May 2004 Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:

> Also, there's apparently a special non-IPA transcription sceme > used by Uralicists, about which I want to know more.
It comes from the so-called "Setälä Notation". It was published by Emil Nestor Setälä, a Finnish linguist, in 1901. This is also the base of the current notations used in Turkology. Its concept came from the Czech-style Slavic orthography (using additional Greek and some cyrillic letters). An important feature of this system is that it tries to map functional cathegories instead of phonetic accuracy. This behaviour makes the translation between Setälä and IPA difficult. However we can transcript Hungarian short "a" in Uralic system (<a0> : "a" with ring above) but we can't do it in IPA (Hungarian phonology uses /O/, but in fact, it has a different acustic quality and would be rather transcripted as /Q_x/.) I will use RFC-1345 notation between <>'s here to ASCII-ize Setälä notation, if applicable. Cf. <http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1345.html>. Additional character is <@> for schwa /@/; the special sign ^ which will change the position of a diacritical mark, e.g. <'(> breve above - <'^(> breve below; the modifier sign ~ to rotate, revert accents, e.g. <'~>> right arrowhead, <'~<> left arrowhead, <'~(> inverted breve The notation between //'s corresponds to X-SAMPA equivalent of the Uralic signs. The Satälä notation is usually typesetted in serif italic font. The Uralist notation has three "joker" characters: - small reversed epsilon (small digit "3", X-SAMPA /3/) stands for any vowels (of uncertain quality); - "baby gamma" (X-SAMPA /7/ or sometimes small digit "8" opened on top) denotes any back vowels (of uncertain quality); - "baby gamma" with diaeresis above stands for any front vowels (of uncertain quality). Vowels are grouped into front and back vowels, there's no central vowels, i.e. a triangular scheme is used. Graphically <a> and <@> are on the central line but <a> is usually considered as back, while <@> as front vowel (in many languages <@> has a back pair <@~(>!). In practice there's three degrees of open-close feature: open, mid, close, _plus_ the "very" open <a>. I use here the following abbreviations the describe the cardinal vowels: B - back, F - front; V - "very open", O - open, M - mid, C - closed; L - labial (rounded), I - illabial (unrounded). <a> BVI, <e> FMI, <i> FCI, <o> BML, <u> BCL; other cardinals have non- systemic diacritics: <a:> FOI, <o:> FML, <u:> FCL, <a0> BOL. (Setälä defined small Greek epsilon also for the sound between <e> and <a:>, but it's seldom used.) The other vowels are derived by diacritics (there may be 3-4 on a single vowel!): <'.> (dot above) - "palatal" (front) variant <'^(> (breve below) - "velar" (back) variant <'-> (macron) - long <'~<> ("<" below) - advanced (also in case of consonants) <'~>> (">" below) - retracted (also in case of consonants) <'^>> (circumflex below) - raised <'^<> (caron below) - lowered <'(> (breve) - shorter, reduced <'^(> inverted breve above - same as breve below (usually used only with schwa to denote velar variant) <'^~(> inverted breve below - semivowel, glide, non-syllabic index-style letter - (1) (between consonants) reduced vowel, e.g. "u" in index is the labial variant of the schwa; (2) (before or after a vowel) the vowel is articulated as a transitional sound between the base vowel and the one in the index. The other notations are author-specific inventions or language specific developments. (Uralists are very inventive in this field :))) Consonantism are more similar to IPA, however there're also constitutional differences, e.g. Setälä doesn't distinguish palatal and palatalized series, therefore <s'> may stand for /s'/, /s\/, <t'> for /t'/ and /c/. Diacritics: small capitals: voiceless small "c" in index (may be substituted by rev-9-quote): aspirated <'~>> ">" below (or above in case of "g" etc.) - retracted <'~<> "<" below (or above) - advanced <'^.> dot below - retroflex (cacuminal, celebral) <'^0> ring below - syllabic Note: Uvulars are transcribed as velars; or retracted velars if they're dictinctive. The only one exception is the uvular trill that has its own sign because there's no velar variant. Plosives: <p> /p/, <b> /b/, <t> /t/, <d> /d/, <t'> /c, t'/, <d'> /J\, d'/, <k> /k, q/, <g> /g, G\/, <'9> (upper quote) /?/. [Many authors state that /c/ and /J\/ are realized as affricate (even in Hungarian), in this case <t'><x*'> and <d'><j> notation is used instead.]. Nasals: <m> /m, F/, <m~<> /F/, <n> /n/, <n'> /N, n'/, <ng> /N, N\/. Fricatives: <f*> /p\/, <b*> /B/, <f> /f/, <v> /v/, <t*> /T/, <d*> /D>, <s> /s/, <z> /z/, <s<> /S/, <z<> /Z/, <x*> /x/, <g*> /G/, <x*'> /C, x'/, <g*'> /j\, G'/, <h> /h, h\/ [(1) <g*'> is usually replaced by a simple <j> if it's not distinctive; (2) When distinctive: /h/ = small cap <H>, /h\/ = <h>; (3) Pharyngeals are not defined, I'd use advanced glottals for them.] Affricates are written as a digraph of the plosive and the fricative element but there're simplifications: <c> /ts/, <ed> /dz/, <c<> /tS/, <ed<> /dZ/. Laterals: <l> /l/, <l'> /L, l'/, <l=> /5, l_e/, small cap <L*> /K/, <l*> /K\/. Tremulants: small caps <Q*> /B\_0/, <q*> /B\/, <r> /r/, <ja> /4/, <r*> /R\/. Approximants do not exist in Setälä system: <j> /j/ is regarded rather as voiced palatal fricative, i.e. a plain sign in place of <g*'>. /r\/ may be advanced <j~<>, /r\'/ as retroflex <j^.>, /M\/ as retracted <j~>>, /w/ as non-syllabic <u^~(>, /H/ as non-syllabic <u:^~(>, etc. If hope I didn't leave out to much and didn't make many mistakes. Addendum: In FU morphology, capitals are used to denote the vowel of the suffixes that changes according to vowel harmony. Usually the back variant is chosen as common form, e.f. Finnish -ssA = -ssa/-ssä 'in', Hungarian -tOk = -tok/-tek/-tök '2pl marker'.

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Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>