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Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 13:41:58 -0300
From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jorge_Llamb=EDas?=" <jjllambias@gmail.com>
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: More phonology: voiced/unvoiced and fricative/fricative
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On 6/23/07, Klaus Schmirler <KSchmir@online.de> wrote:
> My main point against lojban is that it is letter-centric and not very
> sophisticated in the phonetic department. For instance, I would argue
> that each stop is inherently coupled with its release, and that t, ts,
> tc, tl or p and pf are one sound each.

That's not a universal law, it varies from language to language.
For example in Polish (according to Wikipedia) there is a contrast
between czysta 'clean (f.)'  vs. trzysta 'three hundred', where
the first has an affricate and the second a stop-fricative sequence.

Lojban does not make that contrast, so it is allowed to pronounce
the stop-fricative sequence as an affricate, even though it is
technically a stop-fricative sequence.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affricate_consonant> for a better
explanation of the difference.

> But to get on topic:
>
> Among the rules for consonant clusters, I find the following:
>
> Voiced/unvoiced pairs are forbidden except with l, m, n, r. Their
> distinction being that they can be syllabic, I guess. But so can v.

{v} cannot be syllabic in Lojban. Different languages have different
rules about what consonants can be syllabic. None of l, m, n, r
can be syllabic in Spanish, for example.

> Combinations among c, j, s, z are forbidden. They are fricatives, but
> so are f, v, x and voiced x, an allophone of r.

The rule really is that combination of sibilants are not allowed.
(xc and cx are not allowed either, although xs an sx are.)

> Now there's a whole bunch of xr words:
>
> xrabo Arabic
> xrani injure
> xriso Christian
> xruba buckwheat
> xruki turkey
> xrula flower
> xruti return
>
> They taste best to my German palate when I pronounce them with an
> initial ach sound and then just add voicing. And I think one of the
> design principles (which admittedly I haven't found, or I'd have cited
> it above) was that sounds should be maximally distinct. So does [xR]
> count as maximally distinct - if so, I rest my case - or is the uvular
> r forbidden in this context?

[xR] is allowed, but I prefer [x4].

mu'o mi'e xorxes