Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110212210.AA19681@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Tue Oct 22 02:57:58 1991 Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Subject: buffer vowels To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Tue Oct 22 02:57:58 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN For those whose gobs rebel at articulating _zbasu_ or _sumti_ or other such formidable consonant clusters, Lojban allows one to insert any vowel that is not part of the standard /e i u o a @/ inventory. John Cowan would use [I]. Now I believe this is not feasible. I am very likely to hear John's [I] as lojban /i/. Similarly cardinal 13 vowel like in English English _hot_ (written with inverted italic/chancery lowercase a) would get heard as /a/ or /o/. Mid front round '[o"]' would probably be heard as (lojban) /y/. The only vowel I'd be confident of knowing the speaker not to intend to represent some standard lojban vowel is IPA [y], often written u" - a rounded [i] as in french _tu_. But (a) this vowel has not been declared obligatory for this function, (b) the vowel is not among the easiest to make, and (b) it is hardly the sort of unmarked vowel suitable for unobtrusive separation of incompatible consonants. I wanted to don body armour and suggest that lojban syllable structure be declared to be CV(V) (extra V for diphthongs only), with C slots allowed to be empty word initially, and with V slots either filled by /a e i o u/ or by - at the speaker's discretion - [@]. This gives a much more elegant & practical phonology. BUT YES I REALIZE that it has very severe ramifications in lujvo morphology (I don't know about le'avla) but in my blissful and bumptious ignorance I nevertheless think it is worth considering. From reading level 1 materials, the only bad problem I found was in lujvo that would fail the tosmabru test (the only way to legitimize *tosmabru is to make it _tosymabru_ - but on my suggestion, the form would anyway be _tos(y)mab(y)ru_ and therefore not remediable by y-insertion). An extra device would have to be introduced to guarrantee that something is a lujvo. I think ttosmabru (= tytosymabyru) would be unambiguous (where the first consonant is duplicated). I should reiterate that I can't decide whether it is appropriate to criticize apparent design flaws in Lojban. On the one hand one shouldn't assume that flawlessness is intended, but on the other hand Lojbab and Athelstan have offered this sort of criticism to Loglan, and Lojbanists seem fussy about meeting certain design criteria like making ambiguity avoidable, & creating a robust signal, etc. No offence intended, & I stand prepared to be asked not to post this sort of carp to the list. ------- And