An unjustifiably long and geeky return.

[wwidsith]

From a linguistic point of view, it's really a fascinating time to be in France right now. The whole language seems to be going through a lot of big changes on a basic level, and things like grammar and pronunciation are relatively big issues

Comments

[ruakh]

It's right, at least for some value of "right": I literally copied and pasted it here from the TLFi. (http://www.cnrtl.fr/lexicographie/maître, at the very bottom.) And I've found the TLFi to be very good; even though it's a digitized version of a print work - see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trésor_de_la_Langue_Française_informatisé - I've never encountered anything that seems to be a scanno. But I suppose there's a first time for everything, so I can't say I'm sure that it's right for an appropriate value of "right".

I think you're on-target with your "syllabicity" idea. I wish I could be sure, though. I just tried looking up some words that I thought would show how it treats syllabic consonants - lèvre, -isme - and found that it seems to use an open circle for them!

Also - I just noticed that although the TLFi itself doesn't give [ε:] in its entry for maître, it mentions a 1973 dictionary that does so. And I see that the TLFi gives [ε:] in its entry for lèvre, so it does believe in a phonetic long ε, whether or not it believes in a phonemic one . . . languages are too hard, I should just give up now. :-P

[muckefuck]

Well, that's freakin' annoying: they don't give a key for this implementation of IPA. At least they cite Martinet-Walter as their source for that transcription, so I can scare up the print volume and see what it says.

[ruakh]

I assume that the print TLF must have lots of front-matter and such, but all that I can find online are these two prefaces.

[muckefuck]

I've have a look at the print because the trip to the Martinet-Walter cleared up nothing. Their transcription isn't even phonetic, it's phonemic (i.e. /mɛ(:)tr/), so I don't even know who introduced that [ʀ̭]. I'll go back and have a look at the print TLF.

[muckefuck]

Okay, mystery solved: According to the section on pronunciation in the prefatory matter of the print edition, the carat below is used as a sign of "désonorisation", i.e. devoicing. And you're right, the usual IPA symbol for this, the ring below, has been repurposed to show syllabicity. Why anyone would want to deliberate confuse matters this way, I have no idea. Bloody French!

[ruakh]

Bloody French, indeed! :-P

Thanks for your research. I'm so impressed. I've wondered about the TLFi's phonetic notations for years, but I've never once tried to track down a print copy.

. . . but wait, so does this mean that the R is devoiced in maître, but not in mettre? I never realized that such a distinction existed. I always thought that R-devoicing was a very shallow phonetic feature, completely determined by context (and not even present at all in some dialects). Another thing I'll have to look into!