[lojban] Re: "la" rule

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:

> John E Clifford wrote:
> > I thought {lai} could take stress only if explicitly marked by {ba'e}.  That there would also
> be
> > stress on {tl} I pass over as obvious.
> 
> ba'e is totally independent of any sort of vocal stress.
> 
> Why would there be stress on "tl"?  It is a monosyllable.  Lojban's 
> default is penultimate stress, with no stress defined for monosyllabic 
> words.

Because it is a name and thus receives sentential stress and probably inherent one as well, rule
or no rule. The examplre also has {lAI}, which, since Lojban supposedly does not have contrastive
stress (sure, sure!), must be (a part of) either a name or a brivla, with what follows (assuming
the speaker remembers the pause) setting it as a name.  Of course, the stress trick will not vork
generally, since the /la/ or /doi/ or whatever need not be the stressed syllable in the name. 
It seems to me that no trick so far discussed will work in practice: we will not remember to
exempt certain syllables from names, we will forget pauses (though making {la} and the like to be
learned as {la.} where the period is a genuine glottal stop might improve things).  Again, using
something that occurs nowhere else (the glottal stop is a difficult-to-use-or-remember-or-hear
example) seems the safest route (and can be used, as was pointed out some time ago, to deal with
borrowings as well).

 



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