>There have been many attempts and in particular Bell's Visible
Writing and Shavian refer to similar principles as CC, BUT
they (like the alphabet, Pitman's shorthand, and the IPA) use
'kabbalistic', inherently 'meaningless' symbols (the top tips
to the left, or right...) to distingush between sounds, whereas
CC is 'decipherable' - each part of its visual code refers to
the composite of how the sound is formed: vowel or consonant,
('schematic') place of articulation, voiced or not, plosive or
fricative, or 'stretched' or 'rounded' (if vowel). It's true
that these terms and their 'meanings' must be learned (more
difficult if one has already learned that the 'sign': 'A', or
'a' or'@' (cursive...) represents the vowel sound in the word
'at', or 'law, or 'date' or 'above'...).
Rather than "decipherable", I think a better term might be
"iconic" for what you mean. There are lots of people who have
little trouble deciphering IPA. Even so, I'm not sure I agree
that CC is as completely "decipherable" (iconic) as you claim
it to be. For example, the distinction between /l/ and /r/, as
with the distinction between /m/ and /n/, is indicated solely
by the weight of the line. How is that not anything but
arbitrary? For that matter, it could be argued that the use of
weight to distinguish voiced/voiceless pairs of plosives is
equally artibrary. (Generally, the voiceless plosives are
considering stronger or more forceful than the voiced plosives,
but this would have suggested - at least to some - that the the
voiceless plosives have the heavier line.)
By the way, how would any other nasal consonant (e.g. velar,
palatal) be represented? The answer can only be arbitrary,
since there is no systematic mechanism that provides the
answer.
This last point raises up an interesting issue that is a
problem for Iconic systems of representation. Any
representation - even an iconic one - is, of necessity, an
abstraction. An iconic representation system, however,
minimises that abstraction sufficiently so that the
interpretation of the formal representation is apparent. (At
least this is true of any *successful* iconic system of
representation.) It remains an abstraction, nontheless: the
denotation is not the same thing as the denotee. Now, for
iconic systems, the degree of abstraction becomes an important
factor in the determining the range of possible
interpretations: since the interpretation is dependent *solely*
upon the inherent qualities of the formal representation, the
amount of information resulting from the interpretation is less
than or equal to the amount of information that can be embodied
by those inherent qualities. When there is a need to provide a
high level of detail in representations, then the inherent
qualities of that iconic system must be adequate to meet those
demands. The fact that the representation is an abstraction,
however, necessarily imposes limitations.
From what I've seen, CC falls far short of phonetic
representation. (This probably has a lot to do with why I had
never heard of it before.) The palatal and velar nasals are
indicative of this. Other examples abound:
front rounded vowels
back unrounded vowels
aspirated vs. unaspirated plosives
clicks
implosives
lateral articulation (e.g. the "tl" in Nahuatl (Aztec)
languages)
laryngealised vowels
breathy vowel
tone
Perhaps, though, I just missed the following warning
(Warning: Do not attempt to represent languages of SE Asia
using this system.)
from the Linguist General, and several more like it. (Opps -
now I'm getting cynical. Apologies offered.)
There are reasons why IPA works and is accepted. First, it is
infinitely extensible - whenever a need is identified to
represent some detail, a new symbol can always be invented and
conventionalised - and this is so precisely because the system
is *not* iconic: semantics are not dependent in any way upon
any inherent qualities in the formal language. Secondly, it has
been possible to establish a workable balance between the size
of the formal language that must be mastered in order to use it
effectively and the level of detail in representation that is
required.
CC could be extended to support a greater level of detail to
cover the things I listed above and more, but I don't see how
that can be done while keeping it all iconic. There is no
obvious way using the metaphor adopted to indicate inward air
flow, details of the configuration of vocal chords involved in
breathy, creaky or laryngealised vowels, glotallic air
mechanism involved in clicks, position of the tongue body in
velarised or palatalised plosives (as in Arabic or Russian),
etc. It may be possible to add to the metaphor to provide ways
to represent these things iconically, but then a problem would
arise as to whether the formal mechanisms become so hard to
master as to become impractical.
(In considering the need to balance the size of the formal
apparatus with the amount of detail that is required from the
interpretation, I'm reminded of SignWriting, a system for
writing signed languages that was adapted from dance notation.
The representations involve a fairly high level of detail,
which has made me curious to know whether it will succeed as a
practical orthography for any Sign language, or whether the
level of detail is enough of a hindrence to fluent writing as
to make it fail in this function. Not that I have any opinion
as to whether I think it ought to succeed or actually will
succeed. From a purely academic perspective, it's a case I find
interesting because it's at the edge of my knowledge regarding
orthogrphies and socio- and psychological aspects of literacy.)
Beyond that, I'd have to ask, why would I want to bother? Even
the iconic aspects of the system are don't seem to me to be all
that intuitive. (Marie, herself, pointed out, "It's true that
these terms and their 'meanings' must be learned... ".) Even
having taken a course in articulatory phonetics, which
apparently imporant in the iconicity of this system, symbols
derived from Roman script have, at least for me, far more
mneumonic value for phonetic representation.
There is, in addition to all the, the critique that has been
mentioned already that a phonetic representation of "English"
is, of necessity, a representation of some specific dialect of
English. For all of the problems of English spelling, it has
one very great benefit, which is that a single representation
can be read by people from (almost) all over the globe and be
interpreted very nearly uniformly. No phonetic representation
of English could do that.
This has been way off topic. To bring it back on topic, I am
not aware of any evidence indicating that CC has enough user
acceptance (I currently know of a user community consisting of
one) to merit incorporation in any plane of Unicode other than
plane 19. But I think I'm now repeating what's already been
said.
I feel a little bad having said so much to deride what a new
member of the list holds dear, so let me close by saying,
Marie, don't let my critique bother you: you obviously find
this interesting, so keep enjoying it. I know that if I
admitted to my fascination with pant pocket lint, I'd be
laughed off this list.
Peter
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