marking diaresis and accent

Mike Cahill mike_cahill at sil.org
Mon Sep 3 20:11:01 UTC 2012


Well, worth a shot, anyhow. Conceptually, it's like marking a question with a question mark. Presumably each of these contexts should have a different symbolization. Just out of curiosity, did you try that, or was your suggestion one symbol to cover all these?

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of john
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2012 11:24 AM
To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] marking diaresis and accent

 

Believe me, I've tried this idea. This was in fact my initial idea and I only gave it up because I was unable to convince the Dinkas to do this. The specific contexts are: 

(1) 2nd person subject past and
future auxiliary verbs (to distinguish from 1st person subject forms).


(2) 2nd person subject inflections on the verbs (to distinguish them from passives) 

(3) The distal demonstrative (as opposed to the proximal demonstrative), and 

(4) The 'Non-Topical Subject'
construction, in which OVS rather than SVO order is used (this is distinct from the passive, where there is either no agent or the agent is preceded by a preposition). 

They have a much easier time
conceptualizing marking tone in these contexts rather than marking the contexts themselves. They regard marking the contexts as somehow unnatural. 

Best wishes, 

John 

On 03.09.2012 18:12, Mike Cahill
wrote: 

> Yes, there's font solutions that can combine diacritics, but
crucially, for any solution to be used, it must have buy-in by the actual users. It's good that the Dinka (at least some of them) see the need - that's a huge step. 
> 
> I think there may be a totally
different approach possible here, since you're talking about "a limited number of contexts (specifically high tone in specific grammatical contexts which are always associated in high tone in all forms and all dialects)." So far, everyone has focused on the phonetically high tone, and how to mark it, localizing the tone mark on that particular vowel.
Another possibility, since you're talking about a grammatical construction, is to mark that particular grammatical construction. Once the Dinka know that it's that construction, then they will pronounce it the way that construction is pronounced. 
> 
> Not knowing what
construction you're talking about, I can't be too specific on suggestions, but one type of example that's been used is an otherwise unused letter or punctuation mark at the beginning of the sentence or word to mark a specific grammatical construction. 
> 
> This also has
the advantage that in writing, they'll use that symbol (assuming it's been taught well). One problem with trying to mark a phonetic high tone in a very few contexts is that people may have trouble in writing, to decide when to mark high tone and when not to, and they'll probably end up not marking at all, not a desirable outcome.
> 
> Best to you,
> 
>
Mike Cahill
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu
[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of john
> Sent:
Monday, September 03, 2012 9:34 AM
> To: Claire Bowern
> Cc: Pamela
Munro; funknet at mailman.rice.eduSubject: Re: [FUNKNET] marking diaresis and accent
> 
> They agree that high tone should be written in certain
contexts, but when the vowel is already marked with diaeresis, there isn't any obvious way to write it. Adding both diaeresis AND an accent mark over vowels would get too crowded, no one wants this. 
> 
> John
>

> On 03.09.2012 17:08,
> Claire Bowern wrote:
> 
>> Why not just use
one of the many unicode fonts
> 
> that allows combining
> 
>>
diacritics? That includes Times New Roman.
> 
> More philosophically,
there's a long tradition in orthography designof outsiders mandating
solutions which don't get used for reasonswhich ultimately have little
to do with orthography itself. It soundslike you already have agreement
on how speakers would like this to berepresented, so why not use that
and get the technology to work foryou?
> Sent from my iPad Pamela Munro
Professor, 
> 
> Department of

 



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