From cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Sat Jan 4 06:18:16 1992 Return-Path: Date: Sat Jan 4 06:18:16 1992 Message-Id: <9201040215.AA18838@relay2.UU.NET> Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!venus.ycc.yale.edu!LEVY Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!venus.ycc.yale.edu!LEVY Subject: Lojban Phonology X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: RO I am a graduate student doing a dissertation in phonetics and phonology, and I'm a newcomer to Lojban. I have been very impressed by the quality and sophistication of the teaching materials, and I have begun trying to learn the language. I have one question so far: Why is it that Lojban has so many consonant clusters? The general form of polysyllablic words (especially selbri) seems to be CVCCV. This is especially surprising to me, since (1) There have been repeated references to Lojban as a "vowel-rich" language, (2) There was some mention of the language moving toward syllable timing, which would be unusual in a language with so many syllable-final consonants (syllable-timed languages tend to favor open syllables), and (3) If one wants to use Lojban for spoken communication with computers (one of my main interests), having syllable- final consonants only makes things difficult. Given that Lojban has 6 vowels and 12 consonants, the number of possible CV syllables is 6*12 = 72. Therefore, the number of possible two-syllable words is 72*72, or 5184. Perhaps the goal is to distinguish selbri from sumti, since sumti seem to be CV syllables for the most part. Any comments? Thanks, saimyn