Return-Path: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@vms.dc.LSOFT.COM Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE (segate.sunet.se [192.36.125.6]) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi (8.7.1/8.7.1) with ESMTP id RAA08850 for ; Sat, 10 Feb 1996 17:55:53 +0200 Message-Id: <199602101555.RAA08850@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi> Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 1A3426DA ; Sat, 10 Feb 1996 16:55:53 +0100 Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 10:53:30 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: *old response on y and apostrophe To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Content-Length: 1938 Lines: 35 Steven: |By the way, I think the < ' > are ugly and inconsistent with the way < y |> is used. I am planning to continue using < h >. But your omission of |"unnecessary" < h > or < ' > is still befuddling. I think I understand |what you are doing, as you are omitting < h > if the vowel pair thereby |formed is a disallowed dipthong; probably I just can't remember all the |legal/illegal vowel combinations yet. I have no idea what relationship you are seeing between apostrophe and y. y is a phonologically and Lojbanically a vowel. When omitted, the string of sounds remaining is not valid Lojban (except by chance) since it is inserted when the two halves of the word are incompatible under Lojban phonology. The use of 'y' adds a 3rd syllable when there are already 2. (The use of y in lerfu cmavo Cy would need slightly different wording to be true but is still basically the same principle.) The apostrophe is phonologically a kind of glide, which can be considered under some theories a consonant, but in Lojban morphology it is NOT a consonant, and considering it as such would make hash of a lot of the rules of the morphology that JCB came up with (and which we have held true to). It is not really a Lojban letter, but more of an indicator of pronunciation, like the period-for-pause at the end of a name, the comma for syllable division, and the use of capital letters for non-standard syllable stress. If an apostrophe is omitted, then the result is still a valid Lojban word, though it may be less obvious how to pronounce it and you still need some symbol to make ai distinct from a'i. I have yet to hear an argument against apostrophe that doesn't reduce to (predominantly malglico or malropno) aesthetics, or the incompatibility of some software with using "punctuation marks" as letters of the alphabet - these software products apparently cannot handle standard English contractions as well, I presume. lojbab