Subject: Re: [lojban] stress, capitalization & audiovisual isomorphism

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 16:30:18 EST

In a message dated 11/23/2001 2:25:54 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> (NB Remember that an unambiguous orthography is not necessarily
> an audiovisually isomorphic one.)
> 
> The result would look disgusting, but if the AVI requirement
> is suspended in this instance then AVI violation would not
> be a legitimate objection to other orthographies that, for
> instance, get rid of the apostrophe.
> 

This depends upon the details of the function involved in the isomorphy. 
Presumably one complex enough into include features like 
penultimate-syllable-ness would make (in this case) unambiguous and 
isomorphic the same. The problem with dropping apostrophes is -- if you mean 
all of them -- that then you don't even have unambiguous, and -- if you mean 
just the predictable ones -- that you still have a whole lot of essential 
ones left. The remaining stress marks are rare and (so far as I can tell) 
never essential: we may mispronounce a name, but not interfere with its 
referential function any worse than our urrent errors do.