From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Tue Nov 22 2005 - 10:05:09 CST
The suggestion that glottal stop is a "phantasy" is linguistically preposterous, and I'm certain is not what Ken meant.
The glottal stop is most certainly a contoid. Contoids require some obstruction of airflow, but not necessarily by the tongue coming in contact with the roof of the mouth -- [p] is an example we can all agree on, but [ʔ] is also a contoid. I know of no school of linguistics that would question this.
I believe what Ken is saying is that, when glottal stop is phonemic, then it needs to be accorded as much orthographic importance as any other consonant and written with a *letter* rather than with some overloaded punctuation mark.
Peter Constable
> -----Original Message-----
> From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf
> Of Dr.James Austin
> Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 3:27 AM
> To: Unicode Discussion
> Subject: Re: Apostrophes (was Re: Exemplar Characters)
>
> Kenneth Whistler has two points we must agree with, really.
> (1) whereas there are the expressions like 'glottal stop' , 'glottal sound',
> there really is no such speech sound. A speech sound must be either a vocoid
> (go by a vowel letter), or a contoid (go by a consonant letter) For a sound
> element to be qualified as a speech sound it must be 'combinable' with other
> sounds-vowels and consonants, and, occur in the beginning, middle and end of
> (some) words.For a consonant to be, a certain point of tongue must
> approximate/contact a certain point on the roof of the mouth.Where does the
> glottis sit? It is inaccessible to the tongue.
> 'Glottal speech sound' is a misnomer, and represents a phantasy.
> (2)Apostrophe is the name for a 'mark', which when placed at a 'lower level
> after the letter', goes by the name 'comma'.A slight difference in shape
> does not matter. It thus is not an exemplar character; it is just a special
> character, and it represents an 'imaginary soundless gap', required for the
> tongue to slip back from where ever it was to the position to start the "s".
> There is some kind of strain on the far end of the end sound so that the 's'
> becomes like 'z' in some cases.
> Can you 'utter' an apostrophe independantly? Or combined with just any one
> of the vowels?
>
> James Austin
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kenneth Whistler" <kenw@sybase.com>
> To: <unicode@unicode.org>
> Cc: <kenw@sybase.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 5:39 AM
> Subject: Re: Apostrophes (was Re: Exemplar Characters)
>
>
> >
> > > > We could choose U+2019 or we could choose U+02BC. Which one is best?
> > > >
> > > > I hope this question makes sense.
> > >
> > > It makes sense, but it doesn't have a determinant answer.
> >
> > In fact, giving this another think, the *best* answer is to
> > avoid apostrophe altogether in an orthography, period.
> >
> > Given the fact that there are perfectly decent full *letter*
> > characters in Unicode for a glottal stop, not confusable with
> > any punctuation mark, one of those is a far better orthographic
> > choice for a glottal stop than U+2019, U+02BC, or U+0027.
> >
> > Of course the down side of this is centuries of tradition
> > among users of the Latin script for tossing in an apostrophe
> > for a "letter that isn't there", and the glottal stop traditionally
> > got tossed into that bag because it wasn't "really" a sound or
> > a letter, anyway, right?
> >
> > Furthermore, the tyranny of English typewriters (and later ASCII)
> > has made apostrophe the only accepted non-A-Z "letter" that
> > English speakers, in particular, would accept as an exotic
> > addition to the Latin alphabet, so by default it got adopted
> > into a jillion missionary and practical orthographies. Ah well.
> >
> > I still stand by my position that *if* you can convince a
> > community to adopt a *real* glottal stop letter for their
> > orthography instead of an apostrophe, in the long run things
> > will work out better.
> >
> > --Ken
> >
> >
>
>
>
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