PDF embedded fonts.

[Corey Telfer]

Hi Bob,

   The Ablaut paper looks good.  I haven't gone through it entirely yet, but
the small errors I remember from the first copy seem to be cleaned up.

   My Romanian paper is basically the seed of my master's thesis.  In
looking at Romanian 'palatalization' (the addition of an off-glide [j] to
form plurals and second person singular verbs) I found both palatalization
and assibilation effects.  This is not really surprising, considering both
processes tend to be caused by high front vocoids.  In my paper, I take the
radical position that the coronalization of Romanian velars is due to
assibilation.

   It seems likely that the assibilation of coronals is the result of
audiorily-based substitution.  The narrowing of the oral cavity in the
production of high front vowels seems to cause extra frication in stop
releases.  This frication is then reanalyzed as stridency, and thus the
feature [+strident] is inserted into the feature matrix.  I argued that the
same process could happen in velars, except that adding stridency to a velar
should result in [ks], which is an extremely rare segment (only existing in
Blackfoot as far as I know).  Thus the grammar might choose to alter the
velar to a coronal in order to preserve the stridency.  This explains why
coronalization can result in either [ts] or c^ - both are equally strident,
so either one is an expected outcome of this process.

    Romanian is interesting because it contains both [ts] and c^ in its
inventory, but coronalization results only in c^.  I argue that this is due
to the fact that articulatory palatalization also plays a role in the
language (eg. sj --> s^).  Since palatalization is active, c^ is picked over
[ts] in this case.  So this is the basic idea behind my thesis, which will
probably be titled something like "The interaction of assibilation and
palatalization".  I realize that this analysis might not be very appealing,
and that many people may want to stick with the well-accepted model of
articulatory assimilation.  Of you have any comments or questions, I'd love
to hear them.

Corey.

PS.  As I'm sure you know, American policy and Americans in general are not
too popular up here in Canada right now, but whenever I hear someone make an
anti-American comment I tell them about the great Americans I met this
summer in Nebraska.  I can't thank you enough for making me feel welcome.  I
remain impressed by American hospitality and look forward to visiting (or
even studying there) in the future.


"R. Rankin" <rankin at ku.edu> said:

> Hi Corey,
>
> Can't remember exactly what I sent or was supposed to send, but here is an
> improved copy of the Ablaut paper.  I tried reading it on my wife's
computer
> which lacks any Siouan fonts and it looks like they embedded OK this time.
> Adobe Acrobat is really pretty lame at getting these things right.  It's
> probably great for straight English prose, but phonetic symbols make it
choke.
>
> I was in Edmonton a couple of weeks ago and noticed you were giving a
paper on
> Romanian at the provincial meeting in Banff.  I used to do Romanian back
in the
> early '70's when i was a Balkanist.  What was your paper about?
>
> Best,
>
> Bob
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Corey Telfer" <cstelfer at ucalgary.ca>
> To: <siouan at lists.colorado.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 8:18 PM
> Subject: Re: PDF embedded fonts.
>
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> >    I had a bear of a time making your PDF file come out right Bob, but
> > eventually I made it work.  The first copy I printed out had a lot of
fonts
> > wrong, and I only figured that out because I happened to be familiar with
> > the words in question.  I went back to the computer and eventually made
it
> > better, but I'm still not 100% certain that I have all the right
characters
> > in my copy.  If you could provide it as a word document and provide us
with
> > the fonts, that might work better...
> >
> >    I'm sorry to hear that your house was broken into and I hope nothing
too
> > valuable was lost.
> >
> > Corey Telfer
> > University of Calgary
> >
> >
> >
> > "R. Rankin" <rankin at ku.edu> said:
> >
> > > Yes, ideally and theoretically the necessary fonts are embedded
within .pdf
> > > documents.  However, I have found that this is unfortunately not
always the
> > > case.  Any number of times I have tried to make .pdf files of certain
> > documents,
> > > especially using the IroquoianABC font which includes a lot of
overstrike
> > > characters, and found that the resultant .pdf file did not reproduce
the
> > fonts
> > > properly.  It has also often been the case that material in columns
gets
> > shifted
> > > around.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong.  Nor do I know if there is a
> > > difference between the outcomes using "distiller" and "pdf writer"
choices.
> > > I'll give it my best shot though.
> > >
> > > This is going to take a few days since my home was burglarized Monday
and
> > I'm
> > > having to deal with a lot of unexpected paperwork.  Late next week
> > probably.
> > >
> > > Bob
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> >
> >
>



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