>From: Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
>Subject: More ASCII IPA suggestions ...
Sorry for late response. That ol' Real Life...
>No-one expressed any interest in my ideas for a better ASCII
>IPA system, but seeing the attention Adrian's scheme is
>drawing, I thought I might just as well add this to the mix
>anyway. So ...
>
>This scheme is, as shall be obvious, based on X-SAMPA/CXS,
>with some bugfixes (or fixes of things that bug me, at
>least) and one major change.
>
>As in X-SAMPA, all lowercase Roman letter stays.
Same in my unfinished scheme, except that I used _q_
for the velar nasal. The idea was to use the captals
KGQX for uvular sounds. I found no good solution for
the voiced fricatives...
>The big
>change is that anything that is represented in the IPA by a
>superscript is represented by ^ plus the sign in question;
>thus ^h for aspiration, ^j for palatalization and so on.
>When the superscripted character isn't ASCIIically
>available, whatever is used for the character in its
>independent IPA use is used instead; eg ^G for velarization.
In my unfinished proposals I introduced a
distinction between _ and ^ for indicating diacritics.
For example _l indicated 'lateral' while ^l indicated
'lateral*iz*ed', _n was 'nasal' ^n was 'nasalized' etc.
>I'm sure this scheme perserves a variety of aspects of CXS
>others find obnoxious. Tell me, and we can hopefully word
>out an improvement!
I absolutely think that the \ and ` diacritics should
*precede* the character they modify. In the case of the
backslash this is the way it is normally used in
programming languages, and in the case of ` one may
(at least on a Swedish keyboard, as I'm sure you know)
inadvertently type e.g. {tà} when {t`a} is intended,
while {`ta} is fool-proof in this regard.
BTW I think that the frequent use of \ should be
avoided, since it leads to ugly character sequences
in phonemic transcriptions: /i\/ or /\i/ are equally
bad in this respect! I have no immediate suggestion
for an alternative diacritic, however. Perhaps * ?
>The below mostly reproduces the IPA, but
>I'm perfectly open to add more non-IPA distinctions. Anyway,
>this what I have ATM:
[snip]
The only thing that really worries me is how the r`/4` distinction is to be
represented in non-ASCII! :)
Perhaps the olden click-symbol 'streched c' (U+0297)
might be locally revived for [4`]!
BTW there should of course be a retroflex lateral flap
symbol [l\`] too!
>Clicks p! T! t! S!
>
>
>I don't know if any further back clicks are possible, but if
>you can do a palatal click, [c!] suggests itself, etc.
There indeed is a palatal click.
>I do not ATM have any better idea than X-SAMPA's _< and _>
>for implosives and ejectives - I'm open for suggestions.
I suggest _! or ^! for implosives and _? or ^? for ejectives.
>Other consonant symbols:
>
>W voiceless labial-velar fricative.
>w voiced labial-velar approximant.
>H voiced labial-palatal approximant.
>H\ voiceless epiglottal fricative (someone tell me what this is!)
><\ voiced epiglottal fricative
>>\ epiglottal plosive (I want to change these two too - suggestions?)
I used Q\ and P\ as ugly hack alternatives in my CXStoHTML perl script,
since it is my absolute opinion that < and > should be avoided in something
that is to be put inside an HTML document.
>s\ voiceless alveopalatal fricative
>z\ voiced alveopalatal fricative
>s\! palatoalveolar click
>l\ alveolar lateral flap
>x\ simultaneous S and x
>5 velarized alveolar lateral approximant
>
>Affricates and double articulations may optionally be
>inclosed in { } to disambiguate.
An old suggestion of mine. I used the same in my proposal
>Alternatively, affricate or
>double articulation may be assumed, and clusters separated
>by '-'. Note that normal parentesis and square brackets
>retain their IPA functions!
>
>Vowels:
>
>| i y i\ u\ M u
>| I Y I\ U\ U
>| e 2 @\ 8 7 o
>| @
>| E 9 3 3\ V O
>| & 6
>| a &\ A Q
What about [8\] for [2^w]?
>Superagementals:
>
>' Primary stress
>, Secondary stress
>: Long
>; Half-long
>;\ Extra short
>. Syllable break
>| Minor (foot) group
>|| Major (intonation) group
>
>For tone, I don't have any improvements on CXS to suggest
>ATM. However, if '<' and '>' are freed up, I'm thinking they
>could be used to enclose tonal info. Eg, [ma<TMH>] would be
>the syllable "ma" with an obnoxious extra high-mid-high
>contour tone on. Since ! and ^ have been hijacked, it would
>also allow us to use <!> and <^> for downstep and upstep.
Good Idea. May I also suggest the not unprecedented use of numbers 1-5 for
tone annotation on the principle:
<5> extra high
<4> high
<3> mid
<2> low
<1> extra low
If you will it is a way of transcribing Chao-style tone letters.
It also allows for annotation of contour tones like this:
<15> rising
<51> falling
<45> high rising
<12> low rising
<454> rising-falling
Additionally one may use # to indicate numbered tones, like
/ma#1 ma#2 ma#3 ma#4/ for Mandarin, or /anden#1 anden#2/ for Swedish.
>Diacritics:
>
>_0 voiceless (zero)
>_v voiced
>^h aspirated
>_o more rounded (using lowercase lessens risk for confusion with _0)
>_c less rounded
>_+ advanced
>_- retracted
>¨ centralized (did not seem to be any reason not get rid of the underline)
NB ¨ is not a valid ASCII character. I take it you mean ".
>* mid-centralized
>= syllabic
>= non-syllabic (can't think of any symbol that need distinct syllabic and
>non-syllabic diacritics!)
>` rhoticity
>_¨ breathy voiced
Same comment as per centralized above.
May I suggest _h as an alternative?
[snip]
>_` no audible release (similarish to IPA diacritic, and I hate brackets used
>for non-brackety purposes)
Agreeissimo!
>The ^X = superscript X convention may also be used for
>writing explicitly falling or raising diphthongs: [a^i],
>[^uo].
NB that {u^o} might be ambiguous with your 'lowered'
diacritic. E.g. German _au_ is phonetically {ao}.
[snip]
>Bring along the feedback - flak or praise, I'm ready!
>
> Andreas
/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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