Re: Major Defect in Combining Classes of Tibetan Vowels (Hebrew)

From: Peter_Constable@sil.org
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 03:43:08 EDT

  • Next message: Peter_Constable@sil.org: "Re: Biblical Hebrew (Was: Major Defect in Combining Classes of Tibetan Vowels)"

    Jony Rosenne wrote on 06/26/2003 12:16:22 AM:

    > When, in the Bible, one sees two vowels on a given consonant, it isn't
    so.

    That's silly. When one sees two vowels on a given consonant in the Bible,
    it *is* so: the two vowels are written there. It may not correspond to
    actual phonology, ie what is spoken, but as has been made clear on many
    occasions, Unicode is not encoding phonology, it is encoding text. And in
    relation to text, your statement is simply wrong.

    > There is one vowel for the consonant one sees, and another vowel for an
    > invisible consonant. The proper way to encode it is to use some code to
    > represent the invisible consonant. Then the problem mentioned below does
    not
    > arise.

    The idea of an invisible consonant would amount to encoding a phonological
    entity, which is the kind of thing that was at one time approved for Khmer
    (invisible characters representing inherent vowels), but later turned into
    an albatross, and when I proposed the same thing (invisible inherent
    vowel) for Syloti Nagri, it was made very clear to me that it would not go
    down well with UTC.

    Also, the proposed solution of an invisible consonant would leave
    unresolved the problem of meteg-vowel ordering distinctions, while the
    alternate proposal of having meteg and vowels all with a class of 230
    solves both problems at once. Two ad hoc solutions (one for multi-vowel
    ordering, and another for meteg-vowel ordering) must certainly be far less
    preferred for one motivated solution (having characters with canonical
    combining classes that are appropriate for the writing behaviours
    exhibited).

    I invite people to review the discussions from the unicoRe list from last
    December, at which time everyone (including you, Jony) were all concluding
    that the solution which I proposed in L2/03-195 was the best solution to
    pursue.

    - Peter

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Peter Constable

    Non-Roman Script Initiative, SIL International
    7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236, USA
    Tel: +1 972 708 7485

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