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    <p>Dear Yulha, Dear Jesse,</p>
    <p>Being completely ignorant on Gyalrongic languages, I wish to add
      one aspect to the discussion.<br>
    </p>
    <p>For a community that is already acquainted with written Tibetan,
      using Tibetan signs once in accordance with Tibetan rules, once
      against the rules (suggestion made by Jesse for <span
        style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ག</span>/<span
        style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ད</span>),
      may bring too much confusion for the system to be efficiently
      used. But nothing restricts the use of Tibetan alphabet to Tibetan
      orthography. Why not considering e.g. letters like ཨ or ཧ (or even
      འ, restricting མ to all nasal preinitials) for preinitial
      consonants unknown in Tibetic languages? The letters are not used
      in this position in written Tibetan so that no confusion would
      result. You could also consider to write them as superscripts: ཧྡི
      or <sup>ཧ</sup><span
        style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">དི</span>
      or <sup>འ</sup>དི, although for that you would probably need a
      new font.<br>
    </p>
    <p>With best wishes,</p>
    <p>Joanna<br>
    </p>
    <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2022-01-18 09:39, Jesse P. Gates
      wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAEuyQ7nttS7aYZ2f6AoLCMhSVfj==z6P0AmiUaUtYUkPazDBtw@mail.gmail.com">
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        <div dir="ltr"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Dear Yulha,</font>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br>
            </font></div>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif">I </font><span
              style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">too </span><span
              style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">(along with native
              speakers) have been struggling to find answers for an
              orthographic representation using the Tibetan script for
              Stau, a sister language to your beautiful </span>Khroskyabs<span
              style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">. </span></div>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br>
            </font></div>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif">I think འ་ is a good
              choice for non-bilabial preinitials (<span
                style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">nd, nt, ntʰ, ŋg, ŋk, ŋkʰ, etc.)
                and for bilabial preintials before labials. We have
                chosen to use མ་ as the bilabial nasal preinitial before
                non-labials (m- is a distinctive preinitial phoneme in
                Stau and Khroskyabs). This choice is phonological and </span></font><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">sociolinguistic
              (following Tibetan)</span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">. I
              think these sociolinguistic factors need to be considered;
              because of the large number of </span>loanwords from<span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"> Tibetan
              in Stau and </span>Khroskyabs<span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">,
              and since Tibetan is a dominant language, and many
              speakers learn Tibetan spelling rules. </span></div>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span
                style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br>
              </span></font></div>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span
                style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">For </span></font><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ʁ/χ,
              we could use just one grapheme to represent this phoneme,
              since in Stau, like Khroskyabs, we have voicing
              assimilation depending on the initial consonant. However,
              I have decided to follow Sakya Pandita's Law, which is ག་
              before accutes (palatals and dentals) and ད་ before graves
              (labials and velars), again because of sociolinguistic
              reasons; since the large number of Tibetan loanwords obey
              this, but also because it works phonologically. This then
              provides an interesting solution for </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ɣ/x:
              we can reverse Sakya Pandita's Law and so that when </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ག་</span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"> occurs
              before graves it is </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ɣ/x
              and when it occurs before accutes it is </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ʁ/χ.
              The same goes for </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"> </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ད་:
              when occurring before accutes it is </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ɣ/x,
              and before graves it is </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ʁ/χ.
              This doesn't entirely solve the whole problem in terms of
              sociolinguistic acceptability; for example, while <i>ʁdi </i>'erroneous'
              would be written གདི་ and abides by Tibetan spelling
              rule, </span><i
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">ɣdi</i><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"> 'flat'
              would be written དདི་, which breaks Tibetan spelling
              rules. Fortunately, we don't have ɣ- before velars, so we
              can avoid something like གགུ་ for *ɣgə. </span></div>
          <div><br>
          </div>
          <div><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">v/f </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">can
              simply be represented with</span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"> བ་.
              This follows the voicing assimilation rule and is
              satisfactory sociolinguistically for the most part, but
              there are some collocation clashes for Tibetan spelling
              rules. </span><br>
          </div>
          <div><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br>
            </span></div>
          <div><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">s/z
              can simply be represented with ས་. There are still some
              problems for this with Stau because there are minimal
              pairs with nasal initials and palatal approximate
              initials. We can discuss this further if you like. </span><font
              face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br>
              </span></font></div>
          <div><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br>
            </span></div>
          <div><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">I'm
              not sure about </span><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif">l/ɬ,
              because we don't have this in Stau as a phonemic
              preinitial. I guess if you are in the spirit of breaking
              spelling rules, then why not ལ་. </span></div>
          <div><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br>
            </span></div>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif" color="#000000">So as you
              can see, and to answer your question, I think you should
              just represent a single phoneme as a single phoneme (the
              "underlying form"). You are going to have a hard enough
              time finding acceptable spellings just for that. </font></div>
          <div><span
              style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:arial,sans-serif"><br>
            </span></div>
          <div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span
                style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">I'm interested in your
                decisions; it will help in making decisions with the
                Stau community since these two languages have so much
                overlap. We really need to sit down over some butter tea
                and hammer this out at some point. </span></font></div>
        </div>
        <font face="arial, sans-serif">
          <div><br>
          </div>
          <div><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">--</span><br
              style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">
            <div dir="ltr"
              style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">
              <div dir="ltr"><span
                  style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)">Best
                  regards,</span>
                <div><span style="background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0)"><br>
                    <b>Jesse P. Gates, PhD<br>
                    </b>Nankai University, School of Literature 南开大学文学院<br>
                    <a href="https://nankai.academia.edu/JesseGates"
                      target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
                      class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://nankai.academia.edu/JesseGates</a></span></div>
              </div>
            </div>
          </div>
        </font></div>
      <br>
      <div class="gmail_quote">
        <div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 4:49
          PM Yu Lha <<a href="mailto:abayina@gmail.com"
            moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">abayina@gmail.com</a>>
          wrote:<br>
        </div>
        <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
          0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
          <div dir="ltr">
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">Hello all, </p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br>
            </p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">I have been working on
              an orthography for my mother tongue Khroskyabs and I ran
              into a difficulty regarding the ‘depth’ of orthography,
              meaning the level of linguistic structure to represent
              orthographically. <span> I have been consulting with
                Yunfan and</span> I am hoping to get your insights on
              this.</p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0);min-height:15px"><br>
            </p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">The orthography is based
              on Tibetan alphabets which the speakers are already
              familiar with. The question that I ran into is whether or
              not to reflect allophonic contrasts with different
              graphemes.<span> </span></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0);min-height:15px"><br>
            </p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">There are both pros and
              cons for either way. With my priority being language
              revitalization with high learnability, I am even thinking
              about combining both systems to maximize the
              sound-spelling transparency while simplifying some
              allophones with existing Tibetan preintials.<span> </span></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0);min-height:15px"><br>
            </p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">The allophonic variation
              cases:<span> </span></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">pre-initial allophonic
              nasal: mb, mpʰ, mp, nd, nt, ntʰ, ŋg, ŋk, ŋkʰ<span>  </span>(For
              this contrast, I decided to use <span
                style="font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:Kokonor">འ</span>)</p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">Other pre-initial cases:
              <ʁ χ> , <ɣ x>, <v f>, <l ɬ>,<span> 
              </span><s z></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0);min-height:15px"><br>
            </p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)">Any suggestions on how
              to represent the distinction between surface and
              underlying forms orthographically is appreciated. <span> </span></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span><br>
              </span></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span><br>
              </span></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span>Best,</span></p>
            <p
style="margin:0px;font-stretch:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times
              New Roman";color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span>Yulha</span></p>
            <br>
          </div>
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            href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/rgyalrong"
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        </blockquote>
      </div>
      <br>
      <fieldset class="moz-mime-attachment-header"></fieldset>
      <pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
    </blockquote>
    <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- 
Dr. Joanna Bialek
Zentralasien-Seminar
Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin</pre>
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