[lojban] Re: Thoughts on lojban prosody

[Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>]

--- tbovee@daypoems.net wrote:
> Regarding rhyme, my thought is that any language that ends predominantly in
> open syllables (Japanese, certainly; lojban, if you consider gismu alone)
> will have more rhymes than one that includes consonant endings (English).

But if the final syllable is unstressed, it adds to the difficulty of 
finding the rhyme rather than facilitate it. In English you only need to
match stressed vowel + consonant cluster. In Lojban, stressed vowel 
+ consonant cluster + unstressed vowel.

> Strong rhymes in English prosody certainly must be from the stressed vowell
> forward (although there are many lame rhymes in our poetry). Even with that
> restriction, it seems reasonable that a vowel-terminating language would have
> more rhymes than a consonant-terminating one. (I.e., you can rhyme catra and
> matra without worrying about a--hypothetical and non-existent--catrak and
> matrab, where ending consonants spoil the rhyme.) 

catrak and matrab are valid cmene, but I'm not sure I see how their 
existence adds to the difficulty. The comparison of catra and matra
would be for example with English cat and mat. In Lojban you typically
need a longer match than in English.

> Actually, since there exists a good database of gismu and since the language
> is phonetic, it shouldn't be too difficult of a project to calculate the
> number of potential gismu rhymes. Checking English or some other non-phonetic
> language would be far more difficult.

Yes, I see Adam Lopresto just did that. It would also be easy to
add every possible rhyming lujvo, though the list then is much longer.
Someone (tsali?) once published a full list with rafsi. For example 
to rhyme with {catra} you would have any rafsi ending in a
followed by -tra. Lujvo ending in V'V have lots of rhymes. 

In addition to those, words that end in -VCV can be rhymed with
cmavo, for example {prami} with {fa mi}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/