[lojban] Re: Chinese, English and Spanish etymology of Lojban (was: Re: gismu etymology)

[mublin <mublin@dealloc.org>]

[Repost in ASCII]

coi skaryzgik.

On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 10:31:04AM -0500, mls1@rice.edu wrote:
> Looking at the part of the page about the other orthography for
> Alice in Wonderland reminded me of a question I have about
> diphthongs. How did the terms "rising" and "falling" come about? 

Here's the phrase in question:

> A diaeresis is applied to the second vowel of a two-syllable vowel
> pair if the pair would otherwise constitute a falling diphthong
> (``ai, ei, oi, au''), and to the first vowel if the pair would
> otherwise constitute a rising diphtong (``ia, ie, ii, io, iu, iy,
> ua, ue, ui, uo, uu, uy''); the diaeresis is not used in any other
> case.

I thought the terminology was from ``What Is Lojban?'' [1]. Actually
it isn't; ``ai, ei, oi, au'' are described as _rising_ diphthongs
there.

However, my use of the terms seems to be in accordance with the
definition given on Wikipedia [2]:

> Falling (or descending) diphthongs start with a vowel of higher
> prominence (higher pitch or louder) and end in a vowel with less
> prominence, like /aI_^/ in "eye", while rising (or ascending)
> diphthongs begin with a less prominent vowel and end with a more
> prominent vowel, like /I_^a/ in "yard".

You also wrote:

> All the falling diphthongs *end* with high vowels, and all the
> rising diphthongs listed *begin* with a high vowel. This seems
> backwards to me [snip]

Now I am confused. I thought ``ai, ei, oi, au'' (falling diphthongs in
my terms) start with a vowel of higher prominence and end on a
semivowel; whereas in the ``ia'' and ``ua'' series it is the other way
round.

[1] http://lojban.org/publications/level0/brochure/phonol.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthong

--
mu'o mi'e mublin.


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