The CBB

I would like to make the Index Unicode-compatible for ease of searching, but redoing the entire 300+-page document in XeTeX or XeLaTeX or whatever would take me a considerable amount of time. Therefore, I am asking for help.

Would any of you be willing to convert a section or few? I'm told that there's ways to include multiple documents in one document, so I could use some help on that as well (and changing the page orientation for certain pages, which would make it easier to display the phonologies of, for instance, the Caucasian protolanguages).

If you're interested (or if you have some sound changes for or feedback on the document), please shoot me a message.

Thank you.

Wouldn't there be a way to just do a "Find and Replace" operation on the document? I have no idea what those formats were you referenced, but aren't there already Unicode characters used throughout the document?

I'm confused.

The current system uses Tipa, a package which does some crazy witchcraft to make it seem like there is Unicode but is actually ascii with different fonts.

That said, couldn't you port over the document to XeLaTeX and replace all uses of tipa with the respective symbols? Like replace \textipa{N} with ŋ? That would probably already solve a lot, wouldn't it?

Adarain wrote:That said, couldn't you port over the document to XeLaTeX and replace all uses of tipa with the respective symbols? Like replace \textipa{N} with ŋ? That would probably already solve a lot, wouldn't it?

I can't do that because I have stuff like \ipa{m n N} (I changed the command to make it shorter) where you have several symbols under one command.

It would at least replace some parts, so it’d be a little bit less work for afterwards. Considering how big the document is it might cut quite a lot of work if one only has to deal with places where multiple symbols are in sequence.

I'm willing to help.

I've for the most part finished the Sardinian Changes
UV represent stressed and unstressed vowels, respectively (Don't ask me how this happened; it just did!)
Accent vowels are also stressed
SZ represent unvoiced and voiced plosives respectively; care must be taken so that <qu> and <gu> are both in this group
FB represent front and back vowels respectively, a is not in either group

Thanks, qwed117!

I'm a bit confused about this change:

[vwb]//[UV]_[UV] "It seems as if b->Ø was a later shift coming from Iberia; it's not present in habeo->appo"

It looks like it says that those sounds were deleted between all vowels. Can you clarify this a bit, please?

Linguifex wrote:Thanks, qwed117!

I'm a bit confused about this change:

[vwb]//[UV]_[UV] "It seems as if b->Ø was a later shift coming from Iberia; it's not present in habeo->appo"

It looks like it says that those sounds were deleted between all vowels. Can you clarify this a bit, please?

That's precisely what happened. I was surprised too. It's present in haber-> aere, but not habeo->appo.

Presumably it was blocked by the e: habeo -> abjo -> appo. That's a complete guess though.

The Index Diachronica v.8.1 is out.

qwed, you'd mentioned on IRC that your Sardinian changes were incomplete—let me know when they're done so I can add them to the document, please.

You still looking for help on this? If so, it might be helpful to post what specifically folks would have to know in order to volunteer... Because I'd love to help but have no idea what is actually required to do so.

Linguifex wrote:The Index Diachronica v.8.1 is out.

qwed, you'd mentioned on IRC that your Sardinian changes were incomplete—let me know when they're done so I can add them to the document, please.

Yes, they're unfinished, partly due to a scribal error on my part. The words Wikipedia gave were in the current Campidanese standard,which I misinterpreted as Logudorese so I have to fix that. I'm also going to make it into a IPA-friendly variant rather than one highly dependent on orthographical changes. Because of my current workload, however, that might take me past Thanksgiving.

This should serve as a final copy. I tried to remove as much of my "orthography" as possible. S and Z represent unvoiced and voiced plosives (and kw and gw, together) U is the stressed vowels, and V is the unstressed vowels, but they should be omitted when placed onto the document. I don't think it's possible to remove the stressed-based accent without the SCA2 failing. Because of wide variation in spoken Sardinian, it is impossible to catalogue all occuring results of the sound changes (for example Cl->Cr occasionally has l retained, or goes fully to Cj). I have tried to get the most common pronunciations and dialectal variations down. Please pm me if you find any errors, or a word that doesn't go through to the expected outcome. It relies upon a latin text written in broad IPA (ie, /u u:/ not /ʊ u/) My sources are mainly http://www.sardegnacultura.it/documenti ... 093224.pdf

Index Diachronica v.10.0 is out.

Anybody got a better set of changes for Norse? I've been told mine are wrong.

Linguifex wrote:Index Diachronica v.10.0 is out.

Anybody got a better set of changes for Norse? I've been told mine are wrong.

They are sometimes wrong, and many of them are just hard to parse. You can just remove the first change θ→f / _l. I think source file that the changes are taken from included it because the author used an odd word list, where words like Gothic þliugan was taken to show the original cluster (the author actually mentions that other PG reconstructions have *fl here). It's almost certainly the other way around, Gothic had a sound change *fl > *þl in certain contexts.

Also, the changes are for Old Icelandic, although many are common to all Old Norse dialects, some are not even common to all of West Norse.

As far as I'm aware, there is no good list of sound changes that can be easily incorporated into the Index Diachronica. I've actually been working on compiling sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to late Medieval North Germanic but for each change, I'm trying to include a short description, sources, dating, and what dialects the change applied so it's a somewhat sizeable project, and it's perhaps not the main priority right now.

If the Proto-Germanic to Old Icelandic changes are the most interesting for people, I could perhaps try to focus on those and post something less detailed, I'm not making any promises about when, though.

Ephraim wrote:

Linguifex wrote:Index Diachronica v.10.0 is out.

Anybody got a better set of changes for Norse? I've been told mine are wrong.

They are sometimes wrong, and many of them are just hard to parse. You can just remove the first change θ→f / _l. I think source file that the changes are taken from included it because the author used an odd word list, where words like Gothic þliugan was taken to show the original cluster (the author actually mentions that other PG reconstructions have *fl here). It's almost certainly the other way around, Gothic had a sound change *fl > *þl in certain contexts.

Indeed, about the Gothic.
Which see-
http://www.jstor.org/stable/408893?seq= ... b_contents

---

ΚΥΔΟΣ, Linguifex. Most impressive!

I feel this resource is so valuable that it should be stickered. I only found the index about a year and a half after joining the CBB, and now I religiously update it.

The latest version even has sound changes for Cheyenne*! I mean, what could be awesomer? Seriously.

*Even though I suspect they are very incomplete

Linguifex (almost a year ago, I know) wrote:I would like to make the Index Unicode-compatible for ease of searching, but redoing the entire 300+-page document in XeTeX or XeLaTeX or whatever would take me a considerable amount of time. Therefore, I am asking for help.

I think I've figured out how to make a Unicode PDF without having to retyping the whole thing (PDF, TeX source (use with xelatex), though this is based on an old version of Index Diachronica since I don't have the TeX source for the most recent version). (Mostly it just involved changing around the \usepackage statements, and also \ipa in section headings needed to be changed, and also a font that has all the characters.)

I've also made a webpage where you can search for sound changes involving a specific sound (again based on an old version).

chridd wrote:

Linguifex (almost a year ago, I know) wrote:I would like to make the Index Unicode-compatible for ease of searching, but redoing the entire 300+-page document in XeTeX or XeLaTeX or whatever would take me a considerable amount of time. Therefore, I am asking for help.

I think I've figured out how to make a Unicode PDF without having to retyping the whole thing (PDF, TeX source (use with xelatex), though this is based on an old version of Index Diachronica since I don't have the TeX source for the most recent version). (Mostly it just involved changing around the \usepackage statements, and also \ipa in section headings needed to be changed, and also a font that has all the characters.)

I've also made a webpage where you can search for sound changes involving a specific sound (again based on an old version).

One thought: Amazing.