Undefined Phonetic Characters dialog box

If any Phonetic fields contain characters that are not defined in the standard inventory, then those characters will appear in this dialog box.

It can be opened in two ways:

• Automatically - Each time Phonology Assistant (PA) reads (loads) the data sources in a project.

• Manually - On the Tools menu, click Undefined Characters.

Using this dialog box:

1. In the Characters list (left pane), click a row.

• You can learn the Unicode number, see the character and learn how many times it is used in the loaded data.

• displays the undefined characters and the number of times they occur (in the Count column).

2. In the Where character <unicode number> is found list (right pane), you see

• Transcription

• Reference (normally from \ref marker in a Toolbox database)

• Data Source (where the selected character occurs).

3. If you do not want this dialog box to appear automatically, clear () the Show this dialog each time data sources are read check box.

4. To omit undefined characters from phonetic searches, select () the Ignore these characters when searching phonetic data check box.

If you clear () this check box, PA includes undefined characters in phonetic searches.

Because an undefined character has neither a type (consonant, vowel, diacritic, and so on) nor any features (aspirated, bilabial, close, and so on), a search pattern can only match it explicitly. A search pattern considers undefined characters when determining the location (initial, medial, or final) of adjacent phones.

5. Click OK.

Tip

• You cannot open this dialog box if no Phonetic fields contain characters that are not defined in the standard inventory.

• You may be able to use the Transcription Changes dialog box to replace undefined characters with defined characters.

• You may also be able to use the Descriptive Features dialog box to choose features for the undefined character. This may partially define an orthographic character, but it will probably not behave in PA the same as a phonetic character that is defined in the standard inventory.

Related Topics

Tools (menu) overview

Troubleshooting undefined phonetic characters

Troubleshooting no matches in Search view

Troubleshooting no matches in Distribution Charts view