digraphs and sorting

[Andrea L. Berez]

Interesting question, to which I'll respond only anecdotally (because I
don't know of any such studies).

Here at CILLDI this week some savvy Ath (specifically DS) speakers have
told me things like "We have many different "d"s: d, dh, ddh..." So there's
a mix of the awareness of these sounds as somehow separate from one
another, but yes still conceived of as flavors of d. Phonology and literacy
colliding...

Andrea

--
Andrea L. Berez
Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
Director, Kaipuleohone UH Digital Ethnographic Archive
Technology reviews editor, *Language Documentation & Conservation*
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~aberez



On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Mike Morgan <mwmbombay at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would imagine that it would depend on the existing level of literacy
> in a majority language, and what orthographic conventions are used by
> that majority language community. If most members of a community are
> already used to the idea that "th" is a separate sound but is
> alphabetized after "tg" and before "ti", then presumably following
> this practice in creating an orthography would make things easier.
>
> Though, of course, making things easier is NOT ALWAYS the primary
> goal, and sometimes OPPOSING any existing majority language practices
> is preferred as it increases the degree of distinctiveness of the
> minority language.
>
> as I said though, although I think I have seen studies on this
> somewhere, I have no idea where or when they might have been...
>
>
> PS technology can also enter into the mix: Welsh has a long history of
> treating "ch", "dd" and "ll" as separate digraphic characters, and
> alphabetizing them accordingly (so "ch" follows "cz", etc). With the
> advent of word processing, but before special software which
> alphabetized according to welsh rules, things started to change, and
> many people followed English practices ("ch" after "cg"). Now that
> such software is ubiquitous, it is (mostly) back to tradition...
>
> mwm
>
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 8:40 PM, Gary Holton <gmholton at alaska.edu> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I know this list doesn't get a lot of traffic, so apologies in advance
> > for spamming you with this query. For years I've accepted without
> > question the orthodoxy which sorts dictionary entries by digraph
> > rather than by single characters. This makes obvious sense, since
> > digraphs such as th or even trigraphs such as tł' are single phonemes
> > and hence shouldn't be relegated to secondary status within a
> > dictionary. On the other hand, we also know that many languages do
> > just fine treating digraphs as separate characters for the purposes of
> > dictionary sorting (e.g., English has no "th" section; Malay has no
> > "ng" section). So, my question is, does anyone know of any usability
> > studies -- or even just subjective account --  comparing the relative
> > advantages of each approach within a language maintenance situation?
> >
> > Gary Holton
>
>
>
> --
> mwm || *U* C > || mike || мика  || माईक || マイク || மாய்க் (aka Dr Michael W
> Morgan)
> sign language linguist / linguistic typologist
> academic adviser to "Nepal Sign Language Training and Research Centre"
> project
> NDFN, Kathmandu, Nepal
>
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