Re: [bpfk] official cmavo form

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

And Rosta scripsit:

> >It's settled that "ia" is /ja/.
> 
> Does /j/ (corresponding to orthographic <i> rather than <j>) actually
> exist? Are minimal pairs possible with /i/:/j/?

I should have written [ja].  And no, there is no separate /j/ phoneme,
and I hope there will be none.  An alternate analysis is possible by
which there is /j/ and /w/ but not /h/; that is, "kai" is /kaj/ and
"ka'i" is /kai/ with epenthetic [h].  But I see no particular merit in
this analysis.

> These problems arise when {a'ua} is analysed as something other than
> /a'ua/. If Lojban has no /u/:/w/ contrast -- as the impossibility of
> minimal pairs would show -- then /ahwa/ and /awha/ are not possible
> analyses. I think syllabification is likely an unnecessary complication,
> but I don't see why /'/ in /a'ua/ couldn't be ambisyllabic.

Again I should have written [ahwa] with square brackets.  My concern
is that this form would decay to [aWa] and then be merged with [awa].

> The simplest phonological analysis of Lojban is one in which there are
> no clusters at all. The only phonotactic rules necessary are that a
> C many be adjacent only to a V, a V may be adjacent only to a C or a
> glide V of a type other than its own, and /%/ (or however we symbolize
> the buffer vowel) may be adjacent only to a C.

That would still exclude "a'ua", because there is no valid place to insert a %.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan@ccil.org
You let them out again, Old Man Willow!
What you be a-thinking of?  You should not be waking!
Eat earth!  Dig deep!  Drink water!  Go to sleep!
Bombadil is talking.

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