◌̑ | |
---|---|
Inverted breve | |
U+0311 ◌̑ COMBINING INVERTED BREVE |
Inverted breve or arch is a diacritical mark, shaped like the top half of a circle ( ̑ ), that is, like an upside-down breve (˘). It looks similar to the circumflex (ˆ), which has a sharp tip (Â â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û), while the inverted breve is rounded: (Ȃ ȃ Ȇ ȇ Ȋ ȋ Ȏ ȏ Ȗ ȗ).
Inverted breve can occur above or below the letter. It is not used in any natural language alphabet,[citation needed] but as a phonetic indicator. It is identical in form to the Ancient Greek circumflex.
Uses
[edit]Serbo-Croatian
[edit]The inverted breve above is used in traditional Slavicist notation of Serbo-Croatian phonology to indicate long falling accent. It is placed above the syllable nucleus, which can be one of five vowels (ȃ ȇ ȋ ȏ ȗ) or syllabic ȓ. This use of the inverted breve is derived from the Ancient Greek circumflex, which was preserved in the polytonic orthography of Modern Greek and influenced[clarification needed] early Serbian Cyrillic printing through religious literature. In the early 19th century, it began to be used in both Latin and Cyrillic as a diacritic to mark prosody in the systematic study of the Serbo-Croatian linguistic continuum.
International Phonetic Alphabet
[edit]In the International Phonetic Alphabet, an inverted breve below is used to mark a vowel as non-syllabic, i.e. assuming the role of a semivowel. The diacritic thus expands upon the four primary symbols [j, w, ɥ, ɰ] the IPA reserves for semivowels, which correspond to the full vowels [i, u, y, ɯ], respectively. Any vowel is eligible for marking as non-syllabic; a frequent use of the diacritic is in conjunction with the centralised equivalents of the vowels just mentioned: [ɪ̯, ʊ̯, ʏ̯].
The same diacritic is placed under iota (ι̯) to represent the Proto-Indo-European semivowel *y as it relates to Greek grammar; upsilon with an inverted breve (υ̯) is used alongside digamma (ϝ) to represent the Proto-Indo-European semivowel *w.[1]
Encoding
[edit]Inverted breve characters are supported in Unicode and HTML code (decimal numeric character reference).
Name | Letter | Unicode | HTML |
---|---|---|---|
Combining Inverted Breve | ◌̑ | U+0311 | ̑ |
Combining Inverted Breve Below | ◌̯ | U+032F | ̯ |
Combining Double Inverted Breve | ◌͡◌ | U+0361 | ͡ |
Combining Double Inverted Breve Below | ◌᷼◌ | U+1DFC | ᷼ |
Modifier Breve With Inverted Breve | ꭛ | U+AB5B | ꭛ |
Latin Capital Letter A With Inverted Breve | Ȃ | U+0202 | Ȃ |
Latin Small Letter A With Inverted Breve | ȃ | U+0203 | ȃ |
Latin Capital Letter E With Inverted Breve | Ȇ | U+0206 | Ȇ |
Latin Small Letter E With Inverted Breve | ȇ | U+0207 | ȇ |
Latin Capital Letter I With Inverted Breve | Ȋ | U+020A | Ȋ |
Latin Small Letter I With Inverted Breve | ȋ | U+020B | ȋ |
Latin Capital Letter O With Inverted Breve | Ȏ | U+020E | Ȏ |
Latin Small Letter O With Inverted Breve | ȏ | U+020F | ȏ |
Latin Capital Letter R With Inverted Breve | Ȓ | U+0212 | Ȓ |
Latin Small Letter R With Inverted Breve | ȓ | U+0213 | ȓ |
Latin Capital Letter U With Inverted Breve | Ȗ | U+0216 | Ȗ |
Latin Small Letter U With Inverted Breve | ȗ | U+0217 | ȗ |
In LaTeX the control \textroundcap{o}
with \usepackage{tipa}
puts an inverted breve over the letter o.[2]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ Herbert Weir Smyth. Greek Grammar. par. 20 a: semivowels.
- ^ "LaTeX for Classical Philologists and Indo-Europeanists". Retrieved 2010-09-23.[dead link]