Inverted breve
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̑
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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), but the circumflex has a sharp tip; the inverted breve is rounded: compare  â Ê ê Î î Ô ô Û û (circumflex) versus Ȃ ȃ Ȇ ȇ Ȋ ȋ Ȏ ȏ Ȗ ȗ (inverted breve).
Inverted breve can occur above or below the letter. It is not used in any natural language alphabet,[citation needed] but only as a phonetic indicator though it is identical in form to the Ancient Greek circumflex.
Contents
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 Serbian-Croatian linguistic continuum.
International Phonetic Alphabet[edit]
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, inverted breve below is used to denote that the vowel is not syllabic. Thus, semivowels are transcribed either using dedicated symbols (of which there are only a few, e.g. [j, w, ɥ]) or by adding the diacritic to a vowel sound (e.g. [i̯, u̯]), enabling more possible semivowels (e.g. [ɐ̯, ʏ̯, e̯]).
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 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} puts an inverted breve over the letter o.[2]
Notes[edit]
- ^ Herbert Weir Smyth. Greek Grammar. par. 20 a: semivowels.
- ^ LaTeX for Classical Philologists and Indo-Europeanists
