Oh, please... you are trying to find problems where there are
absent... Let's discuss about something more interesting. You do not
want to make yourself fit to the others - it is your problem, and
only yours. Show respect to the others, however, and do not try to
force "standards" because they are not standards in any respect.
You are completely wrong in many points, including terming PIE a
*fiction* - but it is as fictional as Proto-Germanic! We may discuss
of course what reconstruction - PIE or PG is closer to the unknown
reality (and the answer is obvious) but it does not change the fact
that both are only reconstructions.
Once again, IPA is not a standard, in any respect. People from
English-speaking countries may think differently but it does not
matter. The world does not end by English-speaking countries! No one
should be so narrow-minded. In Slavic countries there are also
numerous linguists who make their examinations, and only very small
number of them use IPA at all. It is not because of the tradition
but because the fact that IPA is not convenient for Slavists (and
many others). You may like to write all those arches but we like and
will like to use single symbols for single phonemes. IPA creators
have never understood this.
Anyway, IPA is not a standard. Go to a bookshop in UK or USA, and
buy an English dictionary which uses IPA, good luck with it. Read a
book on Indo-European (Germanic, Italic, Altaic, not even speaking
of Slavic lngs), and find IPA in it. I do not say that such works
are absent at all. But if IPA was a real standard (not only in
opinion of its creators and a small number of followers... I would
even say fans), it would be used in 80-90% books, and it is very far
from being true.
Once again, there is a SCIENTIFIC STANDARD for writing both PIE and
other reconstructed IE proto-languages (like PG) and it is not IPA.
It is not (only) a question of tradition but (also) of a considered
choice. Imagine that the reconstructed language is as real as
natural languages (as an object of scientific examination, it _is_
that real - but IE linguistics is not fiction but science, even if
some people still call it art). Do you know a single language that
uses IPA as its written standard? Notice that unlike English, there
are languages with spelling very close to phonematical one. And
still none of them uses what you call "standard". Unlike the metric
system which has incomparably wider application.
I have read some works of linguists who describe small and little
known languages, and no one of them uses IPA. I have also read some
proposals of artificial languages, made both for normal use (like
Esperanto) and just for fun (like Loxian) - and none of them uses
IPA. The conclusion is: IPA may seem to be ideal for some people but
it does not work well in practice! It is just not practical with all
those digraphs and arches you like so much. So, any comparison of
IPA and the metrical system is just ridiculous. The metrical units
are convenient (much more convenient than all those inches and
yards) - and IPA is not convenient for lots of applications,
including those in IE-stics.
It is as inconvenient as the need to use special third-party
programs (like BabelMap which I know perfectly) only for writing
some strange looking symbols, instead of just using the keyboard in
any text editor. I do not say it is impossible, or I do not try to
find a valid excuse - as there is nothing for that I should say
"excuse me". Which is more, both parts in communication need to have
special fonts to see those arches correctly. Normal fonts, provided
with the operating system of the computer, do not allow to see the
arches on their places, see "
͡͡ts".
The arch should be above the two symbols while it is in front / left
of them. Again, I do not say there are no fonts that show all
diacritics as they should - but it means additional, unnecessary
troubles again. Note also that this stupid system accepted by IPA
creators and followers violates the most basic rule of phonemic
spelling: one letter for one phoneme. No arched digraphs should be
acceptable. It is so because some IPA followers believe (yes! we are
talking of beliefs, not of knowledge) that affricates are two
phonemes joined together! From the point of view, say, Polish
phonology, it is just a nonsense, an absurd. Some people realize
this, and this is why special, single symbols made of two letters
have been added to the IPA inventory. But recognizing /
differentiating of "ts" (2 letters) and "
HTML clipboard
ʦ" (1 letter, code 0x02A6 in
Unicode) is very hard in practice, again. Using "ts : c" is much
simpler, and this is what almost all Slavicists do in fact.
You are also wrong thinking that [a] (or anything else) means a low
central vowel. No, IPA has not a symbol for such a phoneme (instead
of just negating my statements, show me that the organization called
International Phonetic Association terms [a] central). The symbol
[a], by definition, means a front vowel. Not as front as [æ] but
still front. Yes, in a given language it can be accepted for the low
central phoneme but not in general.
So please, finish this unnecessary discussion because you are wrong.
The fact is that very little number of IE-sts uses IPA (I would even
say that no one uses it, counting serious thinkers) and you will not
change it.
You may love IPA very much but the fact is that it is too little
popular to use it here - unless you are so malicious to want to
impose your personal ("idiosyncratic") ideas and this way to make
others' lives harder.
Writing of Altaistics or Uralistics as of "idiosyncratic linguistic
theories" you seem to prove you are urgently looking for an
occassion to quarrel just for quarrelling. It is not a kindergarten
here, and I am not the best partner for it, please look one for it
somewhere else. Anyway, I have just finished this thread with one,
very small request: do not provoke people who comply standards that
are compulsory in the IE-an field of research only because you think
everybody should comply your "standards" instead.
Grzegorz Jagodziński
---In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com,
<flavianops@...> wrote :
>
There is
a reason for the Indo-europeanist tradition, which
is a
question of accuracy, or rather lack of it. Consider
the glottalic
theory versus the traditional one. Both have
problems. One cannot
be sure if PIE *d should be represented either as
/d/ or /ť/. The
phonetic symbols convey a level of accuracy that may
never be met.
Nor can anyone say if the PIE *e was pronounced as
/e/ or /ε/. What
is represented as /bh/ can
could be realized as breathy
voiced, aspirated voiced, or aspirated voiceless
consonant,
depending on the theory one is more confident with.
There is no such
accuracy on the phonological reconstruction so as to
represent the
reconstructed forms with phonetic symbols instead of
letters. It
would be like represent a measure of 5 cm taken with
a ruler as
50.00 mm, as if it was taken with a micrometer.
>
Please
notice I was referring to Ancient Greek and
Proto-Germanic, not the entity called "PIE", which
in my opinion is a *fiction*, albeit a convenient
one. In such a context we should speak of *phonemic*
rather than phonetic values. This
is why e.g. the traditional "voiced
apirated" /bh, dh,
gh/ (/bʰ, dʰ, gʰ/ is a
*misrepresentation*) convey just a little more value
than pure *algebraic* symbols like those intended
for the so-called
"laryngeals" (h₁, h₂,
etc).
> ---In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <grzegorj2000@...> wrote
:
>
It is not tradition, it is a pragmatic approach, for a
number of
reasons.
>
I'd rather say a biased or
idiosyncratic one.
> First: IPA is NOT perfect, especially for languages
(like Polish)
which contain affricates contrasting with consonantal
clusters (like
c : ts, č : tš, ʒ : dz, ǯ : dž etc.).
>
Actually, IPA uses the ͡͡ diacritic to
convey that meaning, so e.g. ͡͡ts is a single
phoneme.
> IPA is
clearly an
English-biased standard, uncomfortable when analysing
e.g. Slavic
languages (this is the main reason for which IPA has
NOT a wide
application in Slavistics). Or Nostratic, where
affricates are
single sounds, not clusters as IPA suggests. Tell
Altaicists,
Uralicists etc. to use IPA...
>
Idiosyncratic linguistic
theories using idosyncratic symbols. Too bad.
> Even worse, IPA has
not a symbol for central [a]!
>
Really? I don't think so.
> Writing [a] we suggest
it was front, and writing [e] we suggest it
was mid-close (and not mid-open). There are no reasons
for such a
suggestion. So, there is also no reason for writing IPA
symbols
instead of the ones widely spread in literature.
>
Literature = tradition.
> Also writing þ instead of the
stylized Greek letter theta (used for IPA) is more
comfortable: I
have thorn on my keyboard layouts (it is used in
Icelandic) while I
have not the Greek alphabet, and the more I do not have
IPA symbols!
>
This can hardly be a valid
excuse about modern computers and software. I'd
recommened you try a nice program called
BabelMap
> BTW, sometimes IPA is
very far from being accurate: English c/k
(like in "cat") is often aspirated and should not be
spelt with just
[k] (in fact, in most cases it is pronounced like Greek
khei and not
like kappa).
>
Most of the time, we
content ourselves with *phonemic* transcriptions, not
phonetic ones, so in the context mentioned, phonemic /k/ is phonetically
realized as a voiceless aspirated [kʰ].
> Then, the Indo-Europeanists convention is as good
and as bad as IPA
is (and sometimes it is even more accurate). But wide
spreading in
the literature works in favour of it, and against using
IPA.
>
But science advocates for
standarization, and this why e.g. the metric system is
almost universally preferred to English units.