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Re: [bpfk] official cmavo form

John Cowan, On 21/10/2014 01:03:

And Rosta scripsit:


Ah. So the two-word version needn't be "a'u.ua"? I had been thinking that
all words must begin with a consonant.


Normatively they must, but the concern is that such glottal stops will
be unstable, since they are not (in the absence of "a'ua"-style words)
necessary for word separation.


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? There are various solutions to that. One, as with Dotside, is to not elide it at all. Another is to elide it willynilly, and worry about distinguishing the unelided and elided versions only when the addressee might misunderstand; though, a problem with that is that it is hard to carefully and deliberately show that one is using a properly /./-less form.


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?

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

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


or, more realistically, [aWua] or [axua].


The latter is "a xua"; [x] cannot be used as an allophonic fortition of [h].


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, and the /'/:/x/ is not robustly sustainable. Under the current rules, /./ must be [T] (contrastive voiceless continuant). OTOH, usage has, I think, hitherto enshrined a posterior voiceless fricative as the realization of /'/, so overlapping with /x/. With rule changes, /'/ could be /G/, or got rid of entirely, which would be my preference, tho it would eliminate Lojban's most distinctive (if egregiously noisome) feature; to eliminate it would -- for many -- be like a well-loved friend having cosmetic rhinoplasty -- they might emerge more beautiful, but not with the face one has loved so dearly.

John Cowan, On 21/10/2014 01:26:> And Rosta scripsit:



But must Lojban so specify the duration of the /i/ in /ia/? That seems
unnecessarily pernickety, given the quite proper laxity of all other
realization rules in Lojban. If, rather, what is settled is that /i/ in
/ia/ is an onset, then I am asking why that must be so.


Historically, I think it rose out of the introduction of ' to simplify the
Loglan pronunciation rules.

In Loglan there is no ', and therefore only
25 VV sequences rather than Lojban's 29 (ignoring "y" in both languages).
These 25 break into four groups according to pronunciation:

ai ei oi ao are always falling diphthongs (in practice, ao is pronounced
[aw] like Lojban au).

ae au ea eo eu oa oe ou are always two syllables; when e is the first,
it is allophonically [e] rather than [E].

aa ee oo are always two syllables *and* one of the syllables is required
to bear the stress (so words like "baarsoa" are invalid, unlike the
Lojban analogue "ba'ars'oa"); ee oo are very rare.

iV and uV may be pronounced either as rising diphthongs, as in Lojban, or
as two syllables: therefore "stomia" may be either ['stomja] or [sto'mia].


The Loglan treatment of /ia/ is clearly better (because it doesn't require rules of syllabification). /ii, uu/ are problematic either way, and should be forbidden. The Loglan way is problematic if it must contrast /ia/ and /iia/.

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.

--And.

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