[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [lojban] Re: Are Natlang the best case for entropy in communication ?
On Tuesday, June 19, 2012 2:58:52 PM UTC+4, Escape Landsome wrote:> I believe that most Chinese words sound the same for an ordinary English
> speaker because the latter is just not used to it's phonology.
> But still Chinese is the language with which you can send people to outer
> space. Does it mean that this language is bad?
No, you miss the point.
The problem is not with pronounciation in itself but with *phonemes*.
Phonemes are defined as smallest units of phonological type that carry
meaning in a double segmentation scheme.
That is, /b/ and /p/ are english phonemes, not because they're not the
same sounds, but because there is a pair of words such as "bit" /
"pit", and thus it is wise to consider an opposition between them.
But in other languages, such as chinese, b and p are not distinct phonemes.
Which is no probleme, because Chinese has other meaningful opposition
pairs, such as "plosive" vs "mute", or "nasalized" versus "no-nasal"
.
And thus, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ /u/ are phonemes in lojban in the
contradistinction set of so'V
But different words with opposite meanings IN THE SAME PARADIGME
differ form only one phoneme, which is not wise
Who is right? The one who says that words must be easy to memorise?
Or the one who says that there should be some entropy?
No language can be convenient for everyone.
---
(Also, "a lot", "few", "all" and "none" do not differ only from one
feature in Chinese... but from a lot a differente phonological
feature. We don't care if "all" and "horse" are very near. But we
care this be the case for "all" and "none" !!!)
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/lojban/-/kQuKdzcp4yEJ.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.