Message-Id: <199602101627.LAA14319@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Sat, 10 Feb 1996 10:53:30 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      *old response on y and apostrophe
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 1938

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