What is this symbol? (FU transcription)

[Christopher Culver]

Räsänen's _Die tatarischen lehnwörter im tscheremissischen_ generally
follows the Finno-Ugrian Transcription. I am familiar with most of
these symbols, but I have come across one which I am unsure of. As an
example, I've scanned this Mari word from the book:

http://www.christopherculver.com/temp/mystery.png

The mysterious symbol is that between the r and the t. What does it
mean, and what is its preferred representation in Unicode?

[Trond Engen]

Christopher Culver:

What does the word mean and how is it parsed?

(Not that I can help in any meaningful way myself, but someone familiar
with Turkic might deduce something from its parts.)

--
Trond Engen

[Nathan Sanders]

In article <87fx8oq...@christopherculver.com>,
Christopher Culver <crcu...@christopherculver.com> wrote:

From what I could find in an online Mari dictionary, this word is
[puld@rtSo] 'quail'. It might also be [puld@r] 'lobby' plus some
suffix [-tSo]. I know nothing about Mari morphology, so I have no
idea if such a suffix exists.

http://mari.finno-ugristik.at/dict.php

There doesn't seem to be any correlate in the Mari spelling of 'quail'
to the reversed comma symbol. Perhaps it's a way to mark that the <t>
and <S> form an affricate? This would necessary if, like in Polish,
stop+fricative sequences are phonemically distinct from affricates.
If so, the IPA equivalent would be the tie-bar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tie_(typography)

If instead your scanned word is [puld@r-tSo], the reversed comma might
just mark a morpheme boundary.

I have no idea why the <schwa> has a circumflex, or why the <o> is on
its side.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

[John Atkinson]

Nathan Sanders wrote:
> Christopher Culver <crcu...@christopherculver.com> wrote:
>
>> Räsänen's _Die tatarischen lehnwörter im tscheremissischen_ generally
>> follows the Finno-Ugrian Transcription. I am familiar with most of
>> these symbols, but I have come across one which I am unsure of. As an
>> example, I've scanned this Mari word from the book:
>>
>> http://www.christopherculver.com/temp/mystery.png
>>
>> The mysterious symbol is that between the r and the t. What does it
>> mean, and what is its preferred representation in Unicode?
>
> From what I could find in an online Mari dictionary, this word is
> [puld@rtSo] 'quail'. It might also be [puld@r] 'lobby' plus some
> suffix [-tSo]. I know nothing about Mari morphology, so I have no
> idea if such a suffix exists.
>
> http://mari.finno-ugristik.at/dict.php
>
> There doesn't seem to be any correlate in the Mari spelling of 'quail'
> to the reversed comma symbol. Perhaps it's a way to mark that the <t>
> and <S> form an affricate? This would necessary if, like in Polish,
> stop+fricative sequences are phonemically distinct from affricates.
> If so, the IPA equivalent would be the tie-bar:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tie_(typography)
>
> If instead your scanned word is [puld@r-tSo], the reversed comma might
> just mark a morpheme boundary.
>

Or could it be to indicate that the last syllable is stressed -- as
would indeed be the case with this word, I understand.

>
> I have no idea why the <schwa> has a circumflex,
>

That's standard in Mari; it means that it's a "reduced" vowel

>
or why the <o> is on > its side.
>

Yes, that's wierd -- probably a typesetter's error.

John.

[Christopher Culver]

I got an answer elsewhere. The symbol in question marks the syllable
boundary so that the r and t'š clearly belong to different
syllables.

Everything else there is pretty common for the Finno-Ugrian
transcription, including the rotated o which is present in Unicode's
Phonetic Extensions block as U+1D11 LATIN SMALL LETTER SIDEWAYS O. I
chuckled to see John Atkinson ascribe it to a typesetter's error.

[John Atkinson]

So, what does rotated o denote? AFAIK, Mari has only one "o" -- there's
its fronted equivalent, o umlaut, which is impossible anyway by vowel
harmony because of the initial /u/.
>
J.

[Tapani Salminen]

On 10 marras, 15:20, John Atkinson <johna...@bigpond.com> wrote:

> Christopher Culver wrote:
> > Everything else there is pretty common for the Finno-Ugrian
> > transcription, including the rotated o which is present in Unicode's
> > Phonetic Extensions block as U+1D11 LATIN SMALL LETTER SIDEWAYS O. I
> > chuckled to see John Atkinson ascribe it to a typesetter's error.
>
> So, what does rotated o denote?

Reduced/centralized quality. http://www.christopherculver.com/temp/mystery.png
represents phonetic, not phonological transcription.

> AFAIK, Mari has only one "o" -- there's

> its fronted equivalent, o umlaut,which is impossible anyway by vowel

> harmony because of the initial /u/.

In phonological transcription /o/ would indeed be used.

Tapani Salminen

[Christopher Culver]

John Atkinson <john...@bigpond.com> writes:
> So, what does rotated o denote? AFAIK, Mari has only one "o" -- there's
> its fronted equivalent, o umlaut, which is impossible anyway by vowel
> harmony because of the initial /u/.

It's a rounded reduced vowel. Mari rounded vowels are only full under
stress, which in words where labial harmony is active falls on the
initial syllable.