Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 July 14

= July 14 =

what do the dashes and accents mean and how to you write them in IPA for Central Sierra Miwok words?
Please help, for instance for "mutá·-j-" (to gather basket making materials) I have mutaː-j-, but I don't know what the dashes stand for and how do you write an accent in IPA for the á for instance? I believe it's like in Spanish, more pronounced? And the - sounds like it's supposed to be a pause, how do you write a pause in IPA? I know the · is a long vowel sound.Baymiwuk (talk) 09:59, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I do not know the language at all and I hear about it for the first time here, but concerning this and your previous questions may I suggest a couple of points. If you really want to transcribe and especially revive a language, for a start you better learn very thoroughly all the available material. That is, start not with a dictionary, but with a grammar where the phonology and orthography of the language is described in details. The dictionary you base your current work gives such; it is not available online, but as you said you live in CA, you definitely can find it in some local library. After reading I bet many of your questions will disappear. Personally, I have no idea what the accents may mean and how to transcribe them into the IPA, until we know what the author of the orthography intended to mean wiht them. If it's a simple stress, then you just write the stress sign. But if the language is pitch-accent or tonal, we must know what these are. For the -j- I suppose it means some sort of verbal suffix, considering the next word in the dictionary is a root-verb without such a suffix. So you do not transcribe it at all in the IPA, because this is a purely morphological notation.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:01, 14 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The dashes (hyphens) indicate divisions between morphemes. A hyphen following a form means that it must be followed by another morpheme. Preceding a form, it means another morpheme must precede. —Stephen (talk) 19:14, 14 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Is this right then mutaˈ◌ːj Baymiwuk (talk) 02:55, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you mean for pronunciation? I think the pronounciation would be muˈtaːj. —Stephen (talk) 09:50, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * How can we know for sure if we do not know the nature of the stress in the language? It may well be tonal. Your transcription is nonsensical. Please, read something like Help:IPA again and very thoroughly. It seems you haven't, but you rush into making a (faulty) transcription. Probably you may slow down your pace and read something like Phonology 101 and the grammar of the language, the latter is a must (have you got it?).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 13:03, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I already read about phonemes? We can make an educated guess based on the available sources and improve it later. I used the information y'all linked to to make my transcriptions. Why is the ' after the u and not after the a I wonder? I have actually already gotten into contact with the linguistics department of UC Berkeley so hopefully I can make a trip out to the campus on my day off and get ahold of any recordings they have and possibly upload some and get help perfecting it and learning more.Baymiwuk (talk) 09:00, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Here's a recoding How are you?/I'm Fine, how would you write those in IPA?Baymiwuk (talk) 09:16, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Here are many other recordings.Baymiwuk (talk) 10:06, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Why is the ' after the u and not after the a I wonder? What do you mean? This is how the IPA works. In other words the stress is a quality of a syllable, so you place the stress sign before it. "Educated guess" is often called WP:OR here. But whatever, if you "guess" the accent is simple dynamic, be it your way, unlikely anyone will contest you on that here.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 12:50, 16 July 2018 (UTC)