From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:51:36 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Fri, 21 May 1993 11:45:33 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8210; Fri, 21 May 93 11:32:59 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5856; Fri, 21 May 93 11:27:18 EDT Date: Fri, 21 May 1993 11:26:23 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: TECH: more on morphology problem - some opionions X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Fri May 21 07:26:23 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: Well, no discussion of the problem on the net. But Nora and John Cowan have given some verbal feedback. They seem to agree that: 1) The type 3 borrowings that cause the problem are prevalent these days, and must continue to be easy to make. 2) le'avla/borrowing morphological space is sufficiently large and rich enough that, when we get to the point where people want to make them, type 4 (pure borrowings) le'avla have plenty of options, even if we add some constraints. Therefore, both favor solving the problem by constraining the pemritted forms of le'avla enough to ensure that no morphological problems exist, and Cowan further wants to take some preventative action by defining some of the losse ends more rigidly. The consensus thus far (which I can accept as well) might include 1) that close-commas (forced syllable breaks) which are 'significant' would be banned from le'avla. In other words, no two le'avla could differ merely by whether there is a close-comma forcing a syllable break at some point. This eliminates some strange vowel glide posibilities and presumably would allow us to have "io" in a le'avla in contrast to "i'o", but not requiring opposition of "io,io" with "i,oi,o" etc. sommething that we had already forbidden in the case of UI cmavo in succession due to possible resolution problems. Close commas could still be used in non-significant pronunciation-aiding ways, and to make the components of the lea'vla clear, as in "bangr,speranto", where you know that the classifier rafsi is "bang-" for "language", and can also see that the 'r' at the juncture is intended to normally be pronounced syllabically. (But given the restriction, would not cause problems if you instead pronounced the 's' syllabically per the syllabization "ban,grs,per,an,to", though the comma would encourage against this). Close commas could also still bne used in names. Parsers and other computationl products might not be requires to support them, though. 2. A new phonological category of "permissible initial cluster" be defined, to apply to le'avla. Clusters at the beginning of words would be required to be such that all pairs of consonants within the cluster be permissible initial pairs, per the standard set already defined. If vowel-initial borrowing roots had a suitable consonant preposed (and Nora suggests 'x' as the norm, as being an easily invisible sound, and not too hard after a liquid), then the use of only 1 of the three {r,n,l} as glue syllabic consonants to attach a rafsi on the front of the root as a classifier, should prevent ever having that first consonant cluster being a permissible initial cluster as just defined. This is because you would always have r/n/l followed by another consonant, and r/n/l are never the first letters of a permissible initial pair. 3. A self-consistent definition of permissible medial cluster would be devised that covered these messy combiantions that can arise in le'avla. the current definition in the Synopsis was written only with gismu and lujvo in mind, and hence is vague and/or forbidding of the norm for lujvo. 4. Cowan will investagate, and may propose some norms for final clusters, which would set a non-mandatory standard for use in names. How does this sound? Does anyone care??? lojbab