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4.1.4.Suprasegmentals and diacritics

The sounds on the tape The Sounds of the International Phonetic Alphabet are pronounced without suprasegmentals and diacritics. However, a restricted set of suprasegmentals and diacritics can be processed in our system.

Length marks and syllabification are processed by changing the transcription beforehand. In the X-SAMPA transcription, extra-short segments are kept unchanged, sounds with no length indication are doubled, half long sounds are trebled, and long sounds are quadrupled. Syllabic sounds are treated as long sounds, so they are quadrupled.

When processing the diacritics voiceless and/or voiced, we assume that a voiced voiceless segment (e.g. []) and a voiceless voiced segment (e.g. [d]) are intermediate pronunciations of a voiceless segment ([t]) and a voiced segment ([d]). Therefore we calculate the distance between a segment x and a voiced segment y as the average of the distance between x and y and the distance between x and the voiced counterpart of y. Similarly, the distance between a segment x and a voiceless segment y is calculated as the mean of the distance between x and y and the distance between x and the voiceless counterpart of y. For voiced sounds which have no voiceless counterpart (the sonorants), or for voiceless sounds which have no voiced counterpart (the glottal stop) the sound itself is used.

The diacritic apical is only processed for the [s] and the [z]. We calculate the distance between [s] and e.g. [f] as the average of the distance between [s] and [f] and [] and [f]. Similarly, the distance between [z] and e.g. [v] is calculated as the mean of [z] and [v] and [] and [v].

The thought behind the way in which the diacritic nasal is processed is that a nasal sound is more or less intermediate between its non-nasal version and the [n]. We calculate the distance between a segment x and a nasal segment y as the average of the distance between x and y and the distance between x and [n].