🚀 go-pugleaf

All-
  My profoundest apologies for my inexcusable tardiness.
Unfortunately, the tasks I get payed to do built up, and finishing
this off got a low priority.  Still, when you start a project, you owe
it to others to see it completed, and so, with things slowing down
before the holiday shutdown, and two people having emailed me for
copies, I finally got off my ass and got this finished.

Following-up to this document will be the latest (last?) draft of the
standard and a document attempting to explain the system for English
speakers for the benefit of non-linguists in alt.usage.english (and
elsewhere).

The changes since the second draft are as follows:

  M   is now back as a (labio-dental nasal) segment rather than as a
      diacritic signifying nasalization.  This keeps the rule that all
      letters are segment symbols, which I think is useful.

  ~   as a diacritic following vowels signals nasalization.  Following
      consonants, it still signals velarization (but not
      pharyngealization).

  <?> as a diacritic signals murmuring.

  <H> as a diacritic signals pharyngealization rather than murmuring.

  ;   as a diacritic signals palatalization.

Since I did not get any feedback on my 'r' proposal, I did not include
it in this draft.  It was

> 	- reserve /r/ for the more common {alv,trl} (instead of
>           /r<trl>/)
> 	- use /R/ for the American {alv,apr} (instead of /r/)
> 	- use /R-/ for {mid,cnt,rnd,vwl} which always seemed to me
>           exactly equivalent to "syllabic r". (instead of /R/)
> 
> This means that I pronounce "brother" as /'bR@ DR-/ instead of /'br@
> DR/.  (perhaps those "@"s should be "V"s).
> 
> I've seen "r with vertical underbar" used for this sound in place of
> "schwa with hook".  Do people feel that these need to be
> dinstinguished?  Or is there general revulsion at redefining a vowel
> as a syllabic consonant?
> 
> For those of you who feel the scheme is too anglocentric, this would
> have the added advantage of being the first common English segment
> that needs to be written with a diacritic. :-)

Again, sorry for the delay.

Evan Kirshenbaum		       +------------------------------------
    HP Laboratories		       | Feeling good about government is like
    3500 Deer Creek Road, Building 26U | looking on the bright side of any
    Palo Alto, CA  94304	       | catastrophe.  When you quit looking
				       | on the bright side, the catastrophe
    kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com	       | is still there.
    (415)857-7572		       |                   P.J. O'Rourke