Re: [bpfk] camxes and syllabification in zi'evla

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

And Rosta scripsit:

> A very precise specification of the what, but not so clear on the
> why. Are there rationales other than "Because CLL says so"? And
> if that is the only rationale, and the rules could be drastically
> simplified without invalidating any existing lexis, why not simplify
> the rules? (Given that anyway the CLL rules are plainly not complete
> and fully specified.)

My intention when writing CLL was to specify certain word forms as
valid by construction, but not to say what else might be valid, much
less what was not valid.  I now think that was a mistake, and CLL should
have prescribed the word forms of fu'ivla and cmevla much more narrowly.
The intention was to allow forms that were as close as possible (but no
closer) to the highly varied natural-language sources.

I also believe that the attempt to prescribe allophony, even unconditioned
allophony, was also a mistake.  We should have said "Six vowels, 17
consonants, these are the normative forms, how you talk is up to you as
long as your interlocutors understand you."

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan@ccil.org
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