> These are traditionally set in small-caps, not capitals. If the phonologists > are getting small-caps into plain text, why not the morphologists? If the > only argument for Q is that there is an /ʀ/, why not the full set, and then > you can write any morphological tag? The chance of confusing "CON" with a > word is greater than that of /Q/ or [Q], if anything.
Let me tidy it up a bit. You may be under impression that the letter has something to do with morphology, but my argument is that the original "Letter for representation of morpheme in Japanese" is a misnomer and this letter is totally unrelated to morphological context. This kind of letters are used to describe phonological representation of words like /deɴkoʜseQka/ in the same way we describe an English word /bætəlʃɪp/. The letters are represented in small capital because they are different from the sound what we usually associate with N, H or Q. (Actually, their phonetic values vary wildly according to adjacent phonemes.) You can substitute ordinary upper cases for them, but they are merely substitution in the same way you type /?/ instead of /ʔ/, or upside-down G instead of /ŋ/, because of the lack of typographical assets. In morphological literature, few authors bother to use these notations since they don't matter in this level of discussion. The word form I mentioned above would be just transcribed as "denkōsekka" and glossed in the next line. Finally, small capitals in the Leipzig rules, I believe, are just stylistic alteration. For example, when you write ᴀᴅᴠ (all small capital), the letters still stand for ordinary A, D and V, for this is obviously the abbreviation of "adverb". It's more like the whole sequence ADV made shrunken in "small caps" mode or style, which is a parallel operation to italicization or boldification. Since the semantic difference is not inherent to the character itself, I don't think Unicode people would treat them as another set of letters in this case. 2016-12-26 18:38 GMT+09:00 Leonardo Boiko <[email protected]>: > I meant that morphological glosses (such as the Leipzig standard) style tags > in small-caps. Like this: > > yukkuri-ni yom-i-mas-i-ta > carefully-ADV read-CON-POL-CON-PRF > > These are traditionally set in small-caps, not capitals. If the phonologists > are getting small-caps into plain text, why not the morphologists? If the > only argument for Q is that there is an /ʀ/, why not the full set, and then > you can write any morphological tag? The chance of confusing "CON" with a > word is greater than that of /Q/ or [Q], if anything. > > 2016/12/26 3:28 "Yifán Wáng" <[email protected]>: > >> Agreed with Yifán Wáng... But I wonder about the need for the character in >> the first place. Are we going to add a full small-caps set, too, given its >> use in morphological glosses? Isn't it enough to use a regular 'Q' in >> plain-text, and style to small caps in rich text? > > No, it's not in "morphological glosses" but phonological notations > such as /yuQkuri/. In morphological discussions, phonological details > are usually ignored and they just write down the surface forms. > >> I can see the rationale for mathematical bold, given that a regular-weight >> plain-text character would stand for a different thing in mathematical >> formulæ. But there's no way a capital Q would ever be confused as anything >> other than the phoneme, in a Japanese phonological transcription. > > I don't think Q is, but it should be in unison with its fellows /ɴ/, > /ʀ/, /ʜ/ etc. Some books make all of them capitals, but others all > small capitals. > Making into small capitals avoids possible confusions with variables > like /C/ or /V/. > > 2016-12-26 5:03 GMT+09:00 Leonardo Boiko <[email protected]>: >> Agreed with Yifán Wáng... But I wonder about the need for the character in >> the first place. Are we going to add a full small-caps set, too, given its >> use in morphological glosses? Isn't it enough to use a regular 'Q' in >> plain-text, and style to small caps in rich text? >> >> I can see the rationale for mathematical bold, given that a regular-weight >> plain-text character would stand for a different thing in mathematical >> formulæ. But there's no way a capital Q would ever be confused as anything >> other than the phoneme, in a Japanese phonological transcription. >> >> 2016/12/25 17:56 "Yifán Wáng" <[email protected]>: >> >> Please excuse my serial posting. >> >> I recently noticed the subhead given to the LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL >> Q in the following document (at A7AF) is "Letter for representation of >> morpheme in Japanese". >> http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16381-n4778r-pdam1-2-charts.pdf >> >> However, to my knowledge, the letter is required for describing a >> "phoneme" of Japanese that isn't tied to specific "morphemes" (~ >> "words"). I have contacted the original writer of the proposal: >> http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15241-small-cap-q.pdf >> and he agrees with me in this regard. >> >> Thus I suppose "Letter for Japanese phonology" would be more desired a >> heading for this character, though subheads are not normative. What >> are your thoughts? >> >> > >
