tie ⁀ | ||
The tie is a symbol in the shape of an arc similar to a large breve, used in Greek, phonetic alphabets, and Z notation. It can be used between two characters with spacing as punctuation, or non-spacing as a diacritic. It can be above or below, and reversed. Its forms are called tie, double breve, enotikon or papyrological hyphen, ligature tie, and undertie.
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Greek
The enotikon (ενωτικόν, enōtikón, lit. "uniter"), papyrological hyphen, or Greek hyphen was a low tie mark found in late Classical and Byzantine papyri. In an era when Greek texts were typically written scripta continua, the enotikon served to show that a series of letters should be read as a single word rather than misunderstood as two separate words. (Its companion mark was the hypodiastole, which showed that a series of letters should be understood as two separate words.) Although modern Greek now uses the Latin hyphen, ELOT included mention of the enotikon in its romanization standard and Unicode is able to reproduce the symbol with its characters U+203F ‿ UNDERTIE and U+035C ͜ COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW.
The enotikon was also used in Greek musical notation, as a slur under two notes. When a syllable was sung with three notes, this slur was used in combination with a double point and a diseme overline.
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses two type of ties: the ligature tie (IPA #433), above or below two symbols and the undertie (IPA #509) between two symbols.
Ligature tie
The ligature tie, also called double inverted breve, is used to represent double articulation (e.g. [k͡p]), affricates (e.g. [t͡ʃ]) or prenasalized consonant (e.g. [m͡b]) in the IPA. It is mostly found above but can also be found below when more suitable (e.g. [k͜p]).
On computers, it is encoded with characters U+0361 ͡ COMBINING DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE and, as an alternative when raisers might be interfering with the bow, U+035C ͜ COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW.
Undertie
The undertie is used to represent linking (absence of a break) in the IPA. For example it is used to indicate liaison (e.g. /vuz‿ave/) but can also be used for other types of sandhi.
On computers, the character used is U+203F ‿ UNDERTIE. This is a spacing character, not to be confused with the alternative (below-letter) form of the ligature tie (a͜b U+035C ͜ COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW), which is a combining character.
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses several forms of the tie or double breve:
Other uses
The double breve is used in the phonetic notation of the American Heritage Dictionary in combination with a double o, o͝o, to represent the near-close near-back rounded vowel (ʊ in IPA).
The triple breve below is used in the phonetic writing Rheinische Dokumenta for three letter combinations.
The character tie is used for sequence concatenation in Z notation. It is encoded with U+2040 ⁀ CHARACTER TIE in Unicode. For example "s⁀t" represents the concatenation sequence of sequences called s and t; and the notation "⁀/q" is the distributed concatenation of the sequence of sequences called q.
The ligature tie is used in the logotypes of mobilkom Austria and its A1 brand.
Encoding
The diacritic signs triple inverted breve, triple breve, and double inverted breve have not yet been encoded for computers.
Unicode has characters similar to the tie: