26.3894, Disc: Documentation of Non-Unicode Phonetic Symbols

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-3894. Thu Sep 03 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.3894, Disc: Documentation of Non-Unicode Phonetic Symbols

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Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2015 09:38:54
From: Kirk Miller [kirkmiller at gmail.com]
Subject: Documentation of Non-Unicode Phonetic Symbols

 
Call for documentation of phonetic symbols not supported by Unicode:

I am working with Lorna Evans at SIL to submit requests to Unicode for unsupported phonetic symbols. If there are letters, diacritics or other symbols that you wish were included in Unicode, please send us a scan or other visual documentation and a reference. 

There's a bit of a Catch-22 in that documentation should be from a published source. Department working papers count as publication, but a PowerPoint screen from a presentation does not. Characters may be filled in by hand, which is what Ladefoged did in a UCLA working paper that we used to document the Toda retroflex lateral fricative ⟨ꞎ ⟩ that was recently accepted by Unicode. Requests for symbols already in the Private Use Area of SIL fonts are welcome. (If in a recent release of the font the symbol is white on a black background, it has already been migrated to Unicode.) Please don't just cite Pullum & Ladusaw's Guide, which by itself is inadequate attestation; we are looking for examples of the symbol in use, even if it's just in a footnote of your thesis. 

We are especially looking for examples of ʟ with a belt (small-cap Ɬ), ʏ with a bar (small-cap Ɏ), small-cap Q (found in the the IPA before 1912, but additional documentation would be useful), superscript q, ʜ and ʢ. We are also looking for lateral flap ɺ with tail ⟨ɺ̢ ⟩, aveolar click ǃ with tail ⟨ǃ̢ ⟩ and other retroflex letters, as Unicode is moving away from the poorly supported retroflex tail diacritic.

Any additional characters you use or find useful in the literature are welcome. For example, the following IPA letters do not have superscript variants in Unicode: 
ʏ ø ɘ ɞ ɤ ɶ ː ˑ ʈ ɖ q ɢ ʡ ç ħ ʜ ʢ ʙ ʀ ⱱ ɾ ɽ ɺ ɬ ɮ ɫ ʎ ʍ ɧ ɓ ɗ ᶑ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǂ ǁ and most letters in the ExtIPA.

Several SIL fonts (Gentium Plus, Andika, Charis SIL and Doulos SIL) support small-cap L with a belt, ʎ with a belt, and retroflex ɺ in their Private Use Area, so publishing these characters is relatively straightforward. Use of the combining retroflex diacritic is adequate to demonstrate need for a precomposed character even if the documentation isn't pretty. Sometimes attempts at publishing unsupported characters get garbled at the printer's, but if the intent is clear from context they may be enough. Please ask if you have any questions.



Linguistic Field(s): Language Documentation
                     Lexicography
                     Phonetics
                     Phonology



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