Re: [bpfk] official cmavo form

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

And Rosta scripsit:

> Is the concern that because /./ is elidable when its presence is not
> morphologically contrastive, the risk is that through habit it would
> end up being elided even when it is? 

Just so.

> a problem with that is that it is hard to carefully and deliberately
> show that one is using a properly /./-less form.

Indeed.

> >In any case, I was talking about "a ua" [a?wa] as hard to distinguish
> >from "a'ua" [ahwa], both tending to become simple [awa].
> 
> Specifically for L1 English speakers, you must mean, rather than for
> people in general. Does it really make sense to base the rules of
> Lojban on the specific needs of L1 English speakers?

Both [W] and the cluster [hw] are rare in the world's languages compared
with [w], so it's not too surprising that most varieties of English have
lost them.  ("Sir, it is not so much to be lamented that Old England is
lost, as that the Scots have found it."  --Sam: Johnson)

> Many L1 English speakers would tend to hear /a.ua/ as /at ua/.

Lojban /t/ is problematic for anglophones in general, given the North
American (i.e majority) tendency to voice it between vowels and to
glottalize it between a vowel and a syllabic consonant.  What is worse,
all anglophones tend to hear [t] (as opposed to [t_h]) as /d/.  I don't
think we can do anything about this.

> If /'/ is to be kept distinct from /x/, /'/ must be [T], giving [aTua]
> for /a'ua/, which is unlikely to become [awa].

I'm not sure if this is meant to be an anglophone or a universal claim.
Anglophones tend to render [x] as [k], as in _loch, bach, Bach_, and
Germans have no problem distinguishing /h/ and /x/ systematically,
though it's arguable that there are no [h] : [x] minimal pairs, as [h]
is only in onsets whereas /x/ in onsets is realized (in the standard
accent, at least) as /C/.

> It would be an assimilation rather than a fortition. As I've said
> before, [h] is articulatorily impossible as a realization of /'/
> in some environments, e.g. /i'i/, at ordinary speech rates, 

I articulate /i'i/ as [iCi], /u'u/ as [uWu], /ii/ as /j\i/ (with a voiced
palatal fricative like Spanish-Spanish "y"), and /uu/ as [wu].

> Obviously it was the glideless /ae, ea, aa/ type that led to Lojban's
> "'". That in itself was not so bad a move, tho the choice of realization
> was, but making it contrastive with zero between other vowels gives
> greater headaches. I'd have just forbidden them altogether; going all
> Livagian on their ass, I'd allow i to be followed by any vowel but i,
> u to be followed by any vowel but u, e to be followed by no vowel but i,
> o to be followed by no vowel but u, and a to be followed by no vowel
> but i and u.

This would, of course, involve a complete discarding of the cmavo list and
starting over.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan@ccil.org
Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic
realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers,
philologists, psychologists, biologists and neurologists, along with
whatever blood can be got out of grammarians. - Russ Rymer

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