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

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 12:55 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com> wrote:

Jorge Llambías, On 26/10/2014 13:58:

On Sun, Oct 26, 2014 at 10:32 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com>> wrote:
There are 18 valid (morphological) codas: the 17 consonants and the empty coda.

I guess it's at least 17, because each of the 17 Cs can occur word-medially before another C that it can't occur word-initially before?

I don't understand the question.

Is it the case that each of the 17 Cs can occur at the start of a cluster that is licit in the middle of a word but not at the start of a word.

Ah, ok. Yes.

In addition to the 17 single consonants, consonantal syllables also have that property, but they are not counted as part of the coda of the preceding syllable, they form a syllable on their own.

Unrelatedly, what's the basis for allowing CCC onsets? Does CLL expressly licence CCC in fu'ivla? The licitness of CCC onsets can't be derived from gismu, lujvo, cmavo. And does CLL forbid CCCC onsets in fu'ivla? (I'm being lazy, here, aren't I. If that's annoying, do remonstrate with me and I'll search online before asking.)

Yes, CLL allows the 36 CCC onsets that camxes allows, plus a whole lot more (an infinite number in fact). CLL allows as initials any combination of consonants in which each CC pair is a valid initial, and the existence of the four affricate initials tc, ts, dj, dz means that indefinitely long onsets are allowed: For example tstststststststststststststsati would be a valid fu'ivla for CLL.

camxes keeps the CLL rule but excluding the affricates from the combinations, and that automatically restricts it to the 36 CCC and nothing else.

fu'ivla do allow a couple of things not present in lujvo, but not a lot more: CCC initials and consonantal syllables.

There is a progression where each class of words introduces something new: we start with vanilla CV (17 consonants and 5 vowels). Then we have:

(1a) gismu introduce CCV and CVC syllables, with the 48 valid CC onsets and the rules for which CVC can be followed by which CV.

(1b) cmavo introduce four new onsets (the dot and the apostrophe, the i/u glides) and five new nuclei (the four diphthongs and y), plus the rule that dot can only be initial and apostrophe can only be medial (and possibly CG initials, although not in official cmavo).

(2) lujvo introduce CVVC and hVC syllables, required to prevent CVV and CVhV initial rafsi from falling off, and I think that's about it.

(3) fu'ivla introduce CCC initials and consonantal syllables.

(4) cmevla introduce dot-consonant and consonant-dot, and currently a whole lot of other things.

I would prefer that fu'ivla did not introduce consonantal syllables. They were added to make type-3 fu'ivla possible, with their CrC clusters, but that could be easily managed with CyrC instead, only requiring a coda for y syllables (which are not currently used outside of cmevla).

The initial CCC are almost there already in lujvo, because we have lujvo like mispre that can easily be syllabified as mi-spre. So even though they don't occur word-initially, they are already present in the middle of words.

mu'o mi'e xorxes