Re: IPA Null Consonant

I'm not sure what Andrew is wanting since IPA does not provide any
prepresentation for "null consonants" -- a null has phonetic value
(consonantal or otherwise) to be represented.

On the other hand a null (slashed-zero or empty set) symbol is commonly
used in linguistic notation, but in phonology, and in morphological
analysis lines of interlinear text.



Thomas M. Widmann wrote on 05/26/2003 06:01:39 AM:
> Aronson, "Georgian", p. 44:
>     [...] Examples:
>     da=v-c̣er-∅-t  we will write it     დავწერთ
>        v-c̣er-∅-t  we are writing it    ვწერთ
>     a=∅-a-šen-eb  you will build it    ააშენებ
>       ∅-a-šen-eb  you are building it  აშენებ
>     [...]

These are very likely indications of a phonologically-null morpheme --
something that is often done when one item in a paradigm is phonologically
unmarked (e.g. English singular as in "book" vs. "books").


>     Here we establish a correspondence set in initial position:
>        ∅/p/p
>     but in order to dertermine whether the proto-phoneme was *p or *∅
>     we must establish a further contrasting set [...]
>
> Durand, "Generative and Non-Linear Phonology", p. 127:
>     [r]-insertion
>     ∅ → r / [ə, əː, iə, eə, oə, aː, oː] #₀ V

These are other common uses, showing through diachronic change or
synchronic derivation the development of a phone(me) where none existed
before/in underlying representation.



> > I agree the EMPTY SET symbol is the right character to use.  It has
> > the right semantics, and in most fonts it will look sufficiently
> > different from the IPA vowel symbol O WITH STROKE.
>
> The only alternative I can think of would be U+0030 DIGIT ZERO, but
> that would look wrong in most fonts.

EMPTY SET is probably the better choice for that reason.


> If U+2205 EMPTY SET is indeed the right character, it might be an idea
> to give it an extra name (LINGUISTIC NULL or LINGUISTIC ZERO), since
> its meaning is of course not "empty set" but rather "empty element".

An annotation about could be added, though I probably wouldn't suggest an
alias: it isn't commonly known as "linguistic null" or "linguistic zero".
If you want to see an annotation, you could make such a request to UTC.



- 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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