Diacritic placeholders are used in search patterns to give flexibility when searching for phones with particular diacritics. Diacritic placeholders are represented by a dotted circle and provide a symbol within a search pattern to which diacritics may be attached.
The dotted circle must be surrounded by square brackets. In addition, since searches in Phonology Assistant (PA) look for phones, and since a diacritic is not a phone, a diacritic placeholder must be found as part of an AND group in which the other element(s) describe more about the phone(s) being searched for.
To search for all aspirated consonants (modified with the superscript h) in any environment, use the following pattern:
[[C][◌ʰ]]/*_*
Notice the outer set of square brackets surrounding the consonant class and the diacritic placeholder. This notation forms an AND group telling PA to find a phone that must be a consonant and aspirated.
To search for all word-initial nasalized phones (phones modified with the over-striking tilde), use the following pattern:
[{[V],[C]}[◌̃]]/#_*
In this pattern, first the inner OR group tells PA to find all phones that are either vowels or consonants (in other words, all phones) and that are modified by the over-striking tilde.
To find all labialized consonants (phones modified using the superscript w) followed by vowels with the +back distinctive feature and modified with the length character, use one of the following patterns:
[[C][◌ʷ]][[+back][V][◌ː]]/*_* or [[C][◌ʷ]]/*_[[+back][V][◌ː]]
Using either of these two patterns will produce the same resulting records. However, the results from using the first pattern will highlight both the labialized consonant and long vowel, while the results from using the second will highlight only the labialized consonant.
Also note that putting an asterisk (the zero or more phones symbol) at the end of the second pattern is not necessary. It is implied.
There may be times when you search for phones modified by a specific diacritic but are also modified by others with which you may or may not be concerned. For example, you may transcribe a high-toned, nasalized vowel by using the over-striking tilde and an acute accent.
To find all word-medial nasalized vowels with zero or more other modifying diacritics, use the following pattern:
[[V][◌̃*]]/+_+
The asterisk inside the square brackets belongs to the diacritic placeholder and tells PA to match phones (in this case, vowels) modified by zero or more diacritics in addition to the over-striking tilde.
To find all the close front unrounded vowel [i] with one or more other modifying diacritics, either word-initially or word-medially, use the following pattern:
[i[◌̃+]]/*_+
The plus sign inside the square brackets belongs to the diacritic placeholder and tells PA to match phones (in this case, [i]) modified by one or more diacritics in addition to the over-striking tilde.
To find all word-medial, aspirated consonants (modified with the superscript h) with the distinctive feature -long, and followed by a vowel, use the following pattern:
[[-long][C][◌ʰ]]/+_[V]
Notice the three elements [-long][C][◌ʰ] are all surrounded by square brackets, forming an AND group. This tells PA that a matching phone must have the distinctive feature -long and must be a consonant, and must be aspirated using the superscript h.
To insert a diacritic placeholder when the insertion point is in the Current Search Pattern box or search item or search environment cell in Distribution Charts view, you can press Ctrl+0 (zero).