[lojban-beginners] Re: double letters

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 7/17/07, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
> I think that any possible string of vowels should be allowed,

The problem I have with that is that it opens the door to really
weird words like {blaaaaaaaa} which I don't think anyone can
really distinguish from {blaaaaaa}. We can say that those words
will be excluded by common sense, and no special rule is
necessary to block them, but even if everybody agrees in that
particular case, perhaps not everyone will have the same common
sense about {blaaaa}, or {blaaa}, or {blaa}. I prefer a restrictive rule
that is occasionally inadvertently broken than an overly permissive
one.

> and that an
> onset can be any string of consonants each pair of which is a valid initial
> pair, as long as "ntc" etc. does not appear.

That would give a list of infinite valid onsets. Again, one can restrict it
by common sense, but I prefer a concrete rule because common sense
for these things is too dependent on one's linguistic background.
(You don't really need the additional "ntc" restriction there because "nt"
is not a valid initial.)

> I also allow a syllable to end
> with two consonants, the first of which is a syllabic consonant. E.g.
> {tarksako} "dandelion" is {tark,sa,ko}.

This one is not so open-ended, so I could live with it, but it does
allow much heavier syllables than what I would prefer.

> I have some other questions that affect a few possibly valid words, e.g.
> {xioskiamo} "henbane",

{xios,kia,mo}, purely as a string of syllables, would be allowed in my
scheme, while {skia,mo} wouldn't.

(The morphological issues concerning tosmabru and slinku'i, that involve
rafsi, have to be considered separately.)

> but I don't think that discussion of the details is
> appropriate for the beginners' list.

Probably true, although some beginners do seem to be interested in some
of these issues.

mu'o mi'e xorxes