On Tue, 7 Jul 2009 19:25:32 -0700, Gary Shannon <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Eldin Raigmore<[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
><snip>
>> You need about fourteen or sixteen "bottom diacritics", about as
many "bottom
>> diacritics" as you have consonants.
><snip>
>> /fl/, /fr/, /sl/, /sm/, /sn/, /sw/, /vr/,
>> /sk/, /sp/, /st/,
>> /bl/, /br/, /kl/, /kr/, /dr/, /dj/, /gl/, /gr/, /kj/, /mj/, /nj/, /pl/, /pr/, /tr/, /tw/
, /tj
>> /, all are onsets in English,
>> and questionably so are /ps/ and /ts/.
>
>I'm going with the "ignorance is bliss" approach where I only have to
>devise symbols to have a close-enough symbol, since the syllabary I
>have in mind is NOT strictly phonetic.

OK

>as for /dj/, /kj/, /mj/, /nj/, /tj/ I'm not sure what words you have
>in mind, but my dictionary doesn't have any of those as word initial
>clusters, and as I've mentioned in several other posts, I have no
>objection to redefining the concept of "syllable" in English to make
>the syllabary work with English.

<dew> /dju/ (minimal pair with <do> /du/)
<cure> /kjur\`/
<mule> /mjul/
<new> /nju/
<tune> /tjun/

>> I don't know how you're planning to handle three-consonant onset-clusters.
>> There aren't as many of them; they are all /s/ + /k, p, t/ + /l, r, w, j/.
>I will redefine "syllable" so that, for example, "scrap" is a three
>syllable word:
>scrap -> skø•ra•pø, where "k" is a diacritic above the "sø" symbol.

OK

>> /sIksTs/ has a four-consonant coda-cluster.  I don't know what the coda-
>> clusters in English are; if your "top diacritics" apply only to continuants,
then
>> the /ksTs/ will have to be broken into /k@s/+/T@s/, I guess.
>
>What is "/sIksTs/"? I don't find anything like that in my dictionary.

How do you pronounce <sixths>?

>As an aside, only about 15% of words in an average English corpus
>require anything other than generic vowels to be distinguishable,
>especially when degenerate consonants are replaced by their actual
>value. For example, "øm•bø•shøn" can only be "ambition", and "sør•tøn"
>can only be "certain". (as opposed to "cør•tøn" which could be
>"certain" or "curtain" due to the ambiguity of "c")

Interesting. Do you have a reference? If so, do you have link to it on-line?

>There only need to be enough vowel mod diacritics to disambiguate
>minimal sets like {alive, olive}, and those diacritics don't
>necessarily have to be phonetic in nature, for ø•lø•vø {alive, olive}
>it would be enough to mark one or the other syllable symbol as
>stressed.

<Aleve> or <Alieve> or <Aleive>, however it's spelled?
And how do you distinguish <olive> from <I love>?

>Sets like ø•dø•ptø = {adapt, adopt, adept} would require
>three distinct vowel mod diacritics, but such sets are very rare,
>showing up in less than 1% of the 1,000 most common English words.

Again, interesting!

Again, do you have a reference? If so, do you have link to it on-line?


>(For what it's worth "ptø", "pdø", "btø" and "bdø" could all be
>represented by a single symbol since "adapt", "adapd", "adabt", and
>"adabd" are all interchangeable without loss of intelligibility.)

I suppose the same is true of <atopped> etc. as well?

>It might be enough to simply assume three vowels, (round, broad,
>open?) that would be close enough approximations to give unambiguous
>symbols for all minimal sets, especially with a diacritic that meant
>simply "diphthong" without specifying which diphthong. Thus {abbot,
>about, abut would all have the same "spelling" but the first would
>show the stress on the first symbol, the second would show stress and
>a round diphthong on the second symbol, and the last would show stress
>and an open vowel on the second symbol.

It would be interesting to see you make this work.

>In many cases the disambiguation could be left to contextual clues.
>The sentence "Is he øløve or dead?" probably references the word
>"alive" rather than "olive".

Sure.
Unless it's part of a pain-reliever commercial, and he has arthritis.

>The basic idea is to represent a word using a system loosely based on
>unique symbols for open syllables (with a restricted set of allowable
>codas), reanalyzing English words as necessary to fit that
>requirement, and with no attempt to use the syllabary to specify the
>actual sound of the syllable with any precision beyond the bare
>minimum needed to distinguish it from other similar words.
>
>--gary

And what is this "bare minimum" -- do you know? Or is that what you're
working on?

-----------------------------------

BTW does anyone know where one can find a list of all the coda-clusters in
English? Four-consonant codas, three-consonant codas, and two-consonant
codas?