phoible
Drop "transitional" phones in SPA
I came across a /ɱ/ in Portuguese:
https://phoible.org/inventories/view/163
So I hunted it down to the original SPA source page:
https://archive.org/details/por_SPA1979_phon
and see that it's marked "transitional". In the SPA manual this is defined as:
"transitional sound An optional, non-distinctive phone which may be interpolated between two segments in the flow of speech; in other words, a free variant of zero."
We've decided to drop these 66 rows (see below) when processing the SPA data. @drammock -- we should probably drop them into the Allophones column then, or?
Rows affected from the raw data:
raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:39: 20 glottal stop 34 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:90: 11 j-fricative 32 (tag(-),transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:363: 53 schwa-over-short 82 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:369: 57 yod 85 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:701: 55 schwa 05 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:750: 29 glottal stop 31 68 (transitional,allo) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:886: 59 schwa 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1117: 25 yod-trema 64 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1119: [r-approximant-uvular] 64 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1120: [glottal stop] 64 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1305: 15 glottal stop 64 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1318: 57 yod 64 (tag(-),transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1320: [v] 64 65 (allo,transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1486: 15 glottal stop 30 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:1823: 18 glottal stop 35 (transitional,limited) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:2009: 54 schwa-over-short 02 35 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:2657: 16 glottal stop (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:3007: 21 glottal stop 30 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:3400: 25 glottal stop 30 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:3427: [w] 62 (free,transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:3436: [yod] 64 (free,transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:3451: 31 glottal stop 39 (limited,transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:4264: 59 yod 42 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:4298: 24 glottal stop 07 13 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:4304: 54 schwa-over-short 12 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:4537: 13 glottal stop 33 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:5198: 55 schwa 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6019: 61 schwa-over-short 78 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6020: 63 i-over-short 80 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6087: 30 glottal stop 70 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6331: 14 eng 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6411: 14 glottal stop 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6422: 56 w 33 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6773: 60 w 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6933: 15 gamma 30 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:6995: 56 schwa 35 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:7113: 55 schwa 47 88 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:7223: 27 glottal stop 31 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:7228: [i-bar] 04 33 68 (allo,transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:7651: 49 glottal stop 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:7738: 55 schwa 37 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:7874: 53 schwa-over-short 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:7984: 53 schwa-over-short 36 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:8163: 25 glottal stop 33 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9179: [eng] 67 (allo,transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9357: 74 e-glide 36 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9358: 75 schwa-glide 36 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9359: 76 iota-trema-glide 36 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9360: 77 e-trema-glide 36 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9705: 27 glottal stop 67 90 (transitional,free) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9775: 23 glottal stop 34 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9923: 14 m (tag(-),transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9924: 15 m-labiodental 65 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9925: 16 n (tag(-),transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9926: 17 n-palatal 65 (tag(-),transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9928: 18 eng 65 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9954: 63 i-over-short 71 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9955: 64 e-over-short 71 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:9956: 65 u-over-short 71 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:10471: 53 schwa 31 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:10481: 58 schwa-glide 32 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:11137: 24 glottal stop (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:11211: 60 schwa-voiceless 31 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:11475: 25 glottal stop 32 33 (loan,transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:11555: 25 glottal stop 10 (transitional) raw-data/SPA/SPA_Phones.tsv:12067: 09 glottal stop 34 (transitional)
If these are "a free variant of zero" then we'd have to add ∅ as a phoneme first, then add the transitional phone as an allophone of that. Adding ∅ to a bunch of inventories (without adding it to all inventories) would inflate phoneme counts for those SPA inventories with "transitional" phones.
My feeling is that we should just drop these entirely (from both Phoneme and Allophone columns). It seems extremely unlikely that these transitional phones can show up anywhere (phonotactically), so probably there's a more restricted way to describe them (like maybe they only show up between nasals and heterorganic fricatives or something) and the description we have ("a free variant of zero") is incomplete. And given the reasonable conclusion that it's incomplete, we can't add these as allophones to any particular phoneme in the inventory, so best recourse is to ignore them I think.
