From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Fri Jan 31 15:07:44 1992 Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Fri, 31 Jan 92 15:07 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA20424; Fri, 31 Jan 92 12:41:33 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA25768; Fri, 31 Jan 92 12:34:43 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA04264; Fri, 31 Jan 92 12:34:46 EST Message-Id: <9201311734.AA04264@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 3937; Fri, 31 Jan 92 12:32:26 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 7812; Fri, 31 Jan 92 12:32:03 EST Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1992 12:30:00 EST Reply-To: "61510::GILSON" Sender: Lojban list From: "61510::GILSON" Subject: Buffer vowels/aka/Allophones of zero X-To: lojban To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO Lojbab writes: >By way of history, the choice of hyphen, and the development of hyphen/buffer >involved a fair amount of testing, albeit only with English speakers. >The original favored approach involved using vocalic 'r' as the hyphen, but >I believe that a significant minority thought this ugly especially in print. >The 'r' approach WAS retained after CVV rafsi at beginnings, and I used it later >in le'avla systmeatization. The vocalic 'r' to some people >is the closest vowel sound to [y], of course. >Instead people chose y=@ as preferred. This caused other problems, including >the fact that JCB at that time planned to use @ as the buffer. Basically, all >the people who wanted to speak the language overruled 'simple' design. JCB >tried and failed to satisfy people using the @ for both hyphen and buffer. I was >one of the opponents, and in the only contribution to the Loglan that JCB >acknowledges, I proposed that speakers of buffered dialects would use 'iy' (yuh) >for the hyphen, and speakers of unbuffered dialects would use 'uh'. I believe >that remains TLI design to the present. An interesting bit of history. Obviously if I'd been there I'd have spoken up for a different solution. >There is no sentiment among the design team to even consider a change until >such a speaker shows up and is interacted with for a while. The strong >sentiment in the Lojban community for stability in baselines makes any >discussion of phonology changes beyond stylistic ones in how we teach the >language academic. This is obviously important to the current Lojban community. In fact, it is this desire for stability in Lojban that I found so frustrating, since it looks to me that Lojban crystallized too soon. But I have to accept that I can't change that, and that is why I choose to be a peripheral observer on the Lojban scene rather than really active. I find the whole project interesting, and I intend to remain in touch (and to send LLG some more money when my own finances are a bit freer) while devoting more of my own efforts to the Language X scheme, where I can more readily help direct the progress of development. It may be noted that in LX I had originally proposed a schwa allophone of zero, and allowing consonant clusters without restriction, to be buffered by schwa whenever a speaker had difficulty, but I was overruled by a majority vote. I still think that it was a good idea, but at least there was a free and open discussion there. Bruce