Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id NAA20913 for ; Tue, 14 Nov 1995 13:43:22 -0500 Message-Id: <199511141843.NAA20913@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 508FE64A ; Tue, 14 Nov 1995 14:31:14 -0400 Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 18:21:40 +0000 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: TECH: Pitch Accent X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Tue Nov 14 13:43:25 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU > Nick Nicholas has proposed to me that high pitch (a la Japanese or > Serbo-Croatian) should be tolerated in Lojban as an alternative to > primary stress. Nora points out that there's no a priori reason > why it should be high rather than low pitch that means "accented". > Comments? Cross-linguistically, hi is more marked than lo. There must be reasons for that, but they're not germane here. I'm not sure it's a good idea though. It's okay for people who are happy with stress, since I, at least, hear the accented syllable in Japanese and in Serbo-Croat as stressed. But how would a pitch- accent lojbanist cope with someone who says selBRIdi amphibrachically stresswise, but with hi-lo-hi pitch? There could be all sorts of confusion. We should be careful to consider things from the hearer's perspective. As I said on the list during the summer (this was in lojban, so it may be noone read it), Nick's voiceless stops all sounded voiced to me (because he doesn't aspirate them), and I was constantly mishearing him in consequence. (Moreover, I then started overcompensating, hearing his voiced stops as voiceless.) --- And