<div dir="ltr">Dear Yulha and all,<div><br></div><div>Before posting this thread, Yulha discussed with me several times about it. </div><div>The fundamental problem that confused Yulha is how we treat the allophones in preinitial positions. The proposal of Yulha was to use འ to represent the phoneme /N-/ which assimilates to the place of articulation of the following consonants, but to use different symbols to represent other allophones: for instance, ས for sC- and ཟ for zC-. </div><div><br></div><div>According to this convention, we have:</div><div>འད་ ndɑ vs འག་ ŋgɑ (both with འ)<br></div><div>but:</div><div>སྤ་ spɑ vs ཟྦ་ zbɑ (with different letters for the same preinitial /S-/)</div><div><br></div><div>In my opinion, a consistent writing system should have avoided different treatments for phonemes of the same nature (in this case, preinitial). In this regard, I roughly agree with Jesse's solution. I would use ས for both spɑ and zbɑ, and the same Tibetan letters for the other pairs of allophones. </div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Missatge de Joanna Bialek <<a href="mailto:jbialek108@gmail.com">jbialek108@gmail.com</a>> del dia dc., 19 de gen. 2022 a les 16:46:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<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>On 2022-01-18 09:39, Jesse P. Gates
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<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">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" target="_blank">abayina@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<p>Hello all, </p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>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><br>
</p>
<p>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><br>
</p>
<p>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><br>
</p>
<p>The allophonic variation
cases:<span> </span></p>
<p>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>Other pre-initial cases:
<ʁ χ> , <ɣ x>, <v f>, <l ɬ>,<span>
</span><s z></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Any suggestions on how
to represent the distinction between surface and
underlying forms orthographically is appreciated. <span> </span></p>
<p><span><br>
</span></p>
<p><span><br>
</span></p>
<p><span>Best,</span></p>
<p><span>Yulha</span></p>
<br>
</div>
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</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre cols="72">--
Dr. Joanna Bialek
Zentralasien-Seminar
Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin</pre>
</div>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Yunfan Lai</div></div>