Re: IPA Null Consonant

From: Andrew C. West (andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu)
Date: Tue May 27 2003 - 04:50:13 EDT

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    Thanks to everyone who responded. I apologise for asking the question and then
    disappearing, but a bank holiday sneaked up on me, and off I was on a family
    outing rather than being glued to my computer all day !

    For those who asked why I needed a Null consonant symbol in the first place, I
    am thankful to Peter for giving a good summary of the possible circumstances
    where a null consonant (or indeed vowel, as was pointed out) may need to be
    represented. My own reasons for wanting such a symbol are for :

    A table of syllables, with initials along the Y-axis (e.g. [t-], [d-], [n-],
    [NULL-] etc.) and finals along the X-axis (e.g. [-ai], [-an], [-am] etc.).

    Giving the IPA value of letters, where one of the letters represents a null
    consonant used simply as a placeholder for vowels (e.g. U+0F68 TIBETAN LETTER A).

    Showing historical phonetic changes of the sort *j- -> NULL-.

    The consensus of opinion seems to be to use U+2205 EMPTY SET for my required
    purpose. This makes sense to me, and I will amend my pages accordingly.

    Regards,

    Andrew



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