Re: The Next Step (was Vulcan in Vulcan) Rob Zook Tue, 21 Oct 1997 22:47:41 -0500 At 09:33 PM 10/21/97 -0500, Saul wrote: >From: Rob Zook >> Alternatively maybe we should simply catalogue the various examples >>in the Zvelebil Corpus and use them as the working set of rules. > >I think this is the best approach, as I said in another message, with >one modification: whatever appears to be true regarding phoneme >frequencies in the lexicon, we should skew the results to favor some >of the more "unusual" sounds to help ensure that the larger >vocabulary we eventually end up with sounds appropriately >"different." > >I'd be happy to help do the tally. Maybe we should come up with a way >to divide the lexicon amongst those wanting to help -- unless Rob's >gotten industrious and done it already! Well, used to work at the Air Force Human Resources Lab, where my main job was to write simple one use, or several use statistical programs. So it occurs to me I could dig out one of my frequency distribution programs and modify it a bit. So it would say print out a frequency list of vowels, consonents and vowel/consonent clusters; and a list of phonological rules like CCVV. The from the list we can come up with some more generalized rules. >I have one other thing I'd like to mention. A while back I posted a >modified transcription system, based on that given in the ZC. At the >time I got one endorsement, one response which was pretty much an >endorsement, and a response that wasn't an objection. ;-, So I'm >going to append it here again. I'm not interested in pushing it on >anybody, but if there isn't sufficient support I'd rather we all keep >using the existing system rather than get splintered -- or at least >confused. > >------- >I'd like to suggest the following alternative notation for the >transcription of Vulcan, adapted from the ZC: > >VOWELS > >ii i u uu > ee oo > e o > ^ > ^^ > aa a > >i pit (Brit English) ii mean (Brit English) >u put (Brit English) uu prune (Brit English) >e set (Brit English) ee prenez (French) >o not (Brit English) oo fault (Brit English) >^ but (Brit English) ^^ sir (Brit English) >a patte (French) aa ? The double letters bug me for some reason. But it does look a little better than using punctuation characters to designate. >the corresponding "short" vowel. What I want to get at here, though, >is that the current lexicon has no examples of nasalized vowels. So >I'm wondering if they're phonemic or if each vowel has a nasalized >allophone. If the latter is true I don't need to worry about having >to write e~, etc. Well the heading in that section does read the "phonemics" and he started the second section as "Section 2: Minimal contrastive pairs for phonemics will be provided at a later date.". That seems to make it pretty clear that the items described constitute phonomes not phonetic symbols. >CONSONANTS I like the consonents, it makes much more sense to me also. Especially using c for "sh", and j for "zh"; and using ts, ks and x. Rob Z.