On Friday, December 19, 2014 8:53:25 PM UTC-5, John Cowan wrote:mai...@gmail.com scripsit:
> This is bad for /u/, because fricativizing the /u/-glide will make
> it sound much like /v/. Not many natural languages have a /w/-/v/
> distinction to begin with, and the needless presence of /uu/ in the
> language makes that distinction tougher.
The reason /wu/ works well in English is that for the last sixty years
/u/ has been moving forward in all or most accents, whereas /w/ has
remained fully back. Consequently, even the semivowel pronunciation of
/w/ won't blend into the following /u/.You're right, and it's easy to verify when I try to form a glide directly from my /u/. My /u/ is still nearer to [u] than to [y], but it's definitely not cardinal. Some time ago I encountered analyses of English vowels in which /i/ and /u/ were represented as just two more diphthongs "iy" and "uw" (i.e. lax vowels + glides [Ij] & [Uw]). This is probably the general reason why words like "yeast" work, and why /u/ is drifting frontward. That suggests that Lojban /ii/ and /uu/ might work if the second vowels could be lax, but lax vowels are probably just as problematic as fricative-bordering /i/ and /u/. We're agreed that the best thing is to rule against /ii/ and /uu/ anywhere outside of the two aforementioned cmavo.
Another possibility is that the anomalous /ii/ and /uu/ words are optionally pronounced as two glides separated by a brief schwa, effectively as */iyi/ and */uyu/. This optional pronunciation might be preferred by some speakers, and should be made available IMHO.
On Saturday, December 20, 2014 10:40:03 AM UTC-5, xorxes wrote:On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 7:13 PM, <mai...@gmail.com> wrote:On Friday, December 19, 2014 4:22:22 PM UTC-5, xorxes wrote:"lei", "le,ii" and "le,ii,ii" contrast in number of syllables.
Then the situation is better than what I described. But the distinction between "lei" and "le,ii" is still gratuitous IMHO. Wouldn't it be better to allow these two to be variants of {lei}?Well, it depends on how much we're willing to reform.
Five out of eleven so far have voted to strike {.nitcion.}, {.buenosaires.} and {.xuan.} from the language, which is at least as radical a reform as anything else that has been suggested, I'd say.
I agree with John Cowan's points -- to me it's questionable whether Lojban can preserve self-segregation while allowing initial glides without the glottal stop in fluent speech, given such possible sequences like /le ia/ and /lei ia/. Maybe it can, so long as we forbid CGV in all non-cmevla (which I think is a good idea anyway). But that seems to me to be a separate issue from forbidding /ii/ and /uu/ outside the two exceptions, and from the idea of preserving {.nitcion.} while allowing it to be pronounced either ['ni.tSjon] or ['ni.tSi.jon], which is the main idea that I was trying to suggest.My assumption is that Lojban needs to distinguish between the four forms "le'i", "le .i", "le ii" and "lei". We have six candidate pronunciations: /lehi/, /le?i/, /le?ji/, /leji/, /lei/, /lej/.Obviously /lehi/ -> "le'i", /le?i/ -> "le .i" and /lej/ -> "lei".That leaves three pronunciations from which to choose for "le ii", and for me the best choice is /leji/ because /le?ji/ is way too close to /le?i/, closer than /leji/ is to /lej/, due to syllable count.I would leave /le?ji/ and /lei/ as dispreferred pronunciations, the first one for "le ii" and the second one for "lei".Now, if "ii" was not a Lojban word, things would be different, and we could give /lej/, /lei/ and /leji/ all to "lei", and /le?i/ and /le?ji/ to "le .i" but I'm working under the assumption that "ii" is a Lojban word and needs to be accomodated.mu'o mi'e xorxes
mi'e .maik. mu'o--
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