On 12/14/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > PN: Firstly, IPA is the International _Phonetic_ Alphabet and is designed > to represent phones, not phonemes; secondly, even though it can be -- > and is -- used to represent a language's phonemes, it's not tailored > to any particular language, and some sounds (particularly dipthongs > and affricates) which are phonemes in a language have to be > represented by sequences of IPA characters. > > SB: Abercrombie, Sweet, Jones, and John Wells have used an IPA based > script for representing BBC English and related dialects. The Association > has never endorsed a particular mapping of the symbols. There are at least > a dozen in use and while there may be a 90% overlap, they are all different > in some respect.
Oh, sure, it can be done; it's just not what it was optimised for. > SB: An IPA based phonemic alphabet has all of these capabilities. > The example is not ideal since there is considerable variation in the > pronunciation of *cot. *nods* That's kind of my point. A phonemic alphabet doesn't care how someone pronounces a given sound; it doesn't use phonetic symbols saying this is "a half-mid close rounded vowel" or the like, but merely identifies the phoneme as "the 'o' in 'cot'" (or whatever). So however anyone pronounces it, they can use the same symbol. If people merge what other people consider two separate phonemes, then the merging person will probably use only one of the two phoneme symbols, but as long as people have the same sets of phonemes, it doesn't matter how they're pronounced -- they can use the same symbols. > cat-cot-caught = kæt- kAt/kOt/kQt - kO:t where O represents the mirrored c > symbol. > Shavian: kAt - kot kYt - kyt I would say that in Shavian, "cot" is always _kot_, except for people who merge "cot" and "caught". > SB: Pitman did something similar with the i/t/a. He insisted that it was > not a pronunciation guide, only a reading guide. The sounds associated > with particular letters were dialect specific. That sounds like a similar goal. The Shaw alphabet also doesn't indicate pronunciation beyond saying "this symbol is pronounced the way you pronounce the sound 'x' in the word 'xyz'". > PN: Strictly speaking, IPA should represent how each particular person > pronounces a phoneme, so someone whose _age_ phoneme sounds > more like the way I pronounce _ice_ (Australians?) should write not /EI/ > but /aI/ (or something like that) in ASCII IPA. This masks the fact that > the phonemes are the same. > > SB: So all of those dictionaries that use IPA for their key are wrong;-) No; they're merely not general -- if the dictionary key is designed well, it'll correctly represent the sounds of a particular dialect/accent. For people with different accents, it'll be "wrong" (or at least, not correspond to their pronunciation the way the IPA symbols are usually defined). > > Shavian has an IPA inspired keyboard map but it also has arbitrary > > symbols for some diphthongs. > > PN: That's not part of the Shaw alphabet, though, merely an arbitrary > convention used by certain fonts which map Shaw alphabet letters to > ASCII symbols so that they can be keyed in from a regular keyboard on > systems which do not support Unicode fonts or changeable keyboard > schemes. > > SB: I have argued that the keyboard map could be more user friendly. *shrugs* I suppose. > The keyboard map is not completely arbitrary but more readable options > could have been used. Reforming the keyboard map is relatively simple. Go right ahead -- you can use any map you'd like. As I say, the keyboard map is supposed to be irrelevant; when you read a printed page of Shavian, you don't care whether the short vertical mark indicating the letter _if_ was produced by typing "i" or "Q" or "&". Once you've pressed the key -- in whatever keyboard map your font uses -- and you see the shape on the screen, that's what's important. The keyboard map only becomes relevant in the situations where it is, unfortunately, not possible to display the proper shapes and you see Roman letters instead. Cheers, -- Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Know an art & music fan? Make a donation in their honor this holiday season! http://us.click.yahoo.com/.6dcNC/.VHMAA/Zx0JAA/mx3olB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shavian/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
