Re: More ASCII IPA suggestions

At 20:16 6.2.2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
>
>
> > >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.
>
>
>Neato. However, implementing something of the sort would be a biggish
>upheavel, so I'm only adding it to the possible ideas list for now.
>
> > >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.
>
>Probably because of the way letters like 'h' and 'j' are misused as
>quasidiacritics in many Latinically written languages, I've always felt that
>pseudodiacritics should follow the sign the modify, hard on automatic parsing
>software as it may be.
There is that.  In my converter I had to list each entity as a
separate replacement, and order them so that CXS symbols
containing underscore *and* backslash were ordered first,
then those containing underscore but no backslash, then those
with backslash but no underscore, and last all others.

Maybe there *is* an more elegant way to do it, but I didn't
find it worth the while to come up with one.


>And while frontifying ` would decrease typing pain with retroflex consonants,
>it would increase it with rhotic vowels - you'd risk end up writing 'àt'
>intending '`at', while the present 'a`t' is fool-proof.
>
>Additionally, both the rhoticity hook and the "claws" of the retroflex IPA
>letters go right, so I feel having the ` to the right improves mnemonicity.
I think that should be mnemonicality, if indeed there is such a word.


> > 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 * ?
>
>I don't much like the backslash for this either, but good alternatives are
>rare.
>
>Least bad would probably be simply switching * and \ - no-one seems to be much
>using the mid-centralizing diacritic anyway. Does anyone else have an opinion
>on this?
You could always use [^*] for mid-centralizing and
consign the backslash to oblivion, or use \ as a less
confusable alternative to ` -- cf. the typo-problem above
and the fact that people tend to mix up ` and '!


> > >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! :)
>
>Well, solving that didn't figure in my objectives!
>
> > 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!
>
>Indeedy! Consider it added.
May I also propose [w\] (or [w*]) for bilabial approximant
as in Hlasa Tibetan [NA:_Lw\@N_H], a proper name.
I use Greek psi for this as a compromise between IPA
[p\] and [v\].

BTW in my converter I also used [a\] = [&] and [o\] = [&\],
since I wanted to avoid & < > which are escaped in HTML.

[biiig snip]


>I _did_ write [^uo], and ^u isn't defined as a diacritic! You're right in
>substance, however; the scheme is presently ambuiguous here.
>
>Hm, by my own rules, the nasal and lateral release should be ^n and ^l, which
>frees up _l for lowered, which is mnemonically to be prefered, methinks.
Agree.

>Then
>we'll also have _r for raised. Which nicely solves the ambiguity with ^o, too.
>
>I'd say that German diphthong is closer to [{Ao}], tho.
Very possible.  I've never seen it so transcribed tho.
I guess the a/A distinction is less audible to Germans
than to Swedes.  FWIW I hardly have [A] in unmonitored
speech (I have all of [a a: Q Q:] however!  My dad had
[A] in _mast_, but I rather have [Q] or [A^w] there.


>                                                               Andreas

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
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                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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