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 PAA11891 for ; Mon, 13 Nov 1995 15:59:27 -0500 Message-Id: <199511132059.PAA11891@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 1156517D ; Mon, 13 Nov 1995 16:53:49 -0400 Date: Mon, 13 Nov 1995 13:50:43 -0700 Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: TECH: Pitch Accent X-To: lojban@cuvmb.bitnet To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Mon Nov 13 15:59:33 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? I can't hear stress if it's marked only with pitch. You'd think it would be easy to hear, but at least in my experience it's not. I don't think the two systems of stress are compatible, regardless of the choice of high or low. If you want to use Japanese-style stress as an alternate standard, I would think high would at least be superficially more consistent with the existing standard. Is it easier for pitch-stress-language speakers to learn English-style stress than vice versa? I'd guess it would be but I don't know.