Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Lojban Text to Speech

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 04:31:56 EST

In a message dated 1/6/2002 5:03:29 PM Central Standard Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> I would like to also see use of varying sounds other than r - for instance,
> I (and I think PC as well, though I amn't sure) use /T/ instead of /h/ for
> {'}; I would like to have a Lojban TTS voice with that one.
> 

I do when I remember, but years of habit die hard and I do slip until I 
notice I am generating ambiguities between {V'V) and {VV}.

Cherlin:
<Actually, therre arre severral distinctive Amurrcan 'r's, and some 
that disappeah entially.>

I haven't seen anything lately on this claim, but the last I saw (and its 
ancestors for about a decade) was that, since just about everyone could come 
to regularly distinguish between r'd and r-less cases, the allophones of /r/ 
involved was not 0 but something way off the normal English spectrum, ranging 
-- various r'less dialects -- from pitch-stress-juncture to pharyngealization 
through retroflexion and a number of other odd things with the back of the 
tongue . They just hid a bit, but they don't disappear. Unless something 
new has turned up beyond the old mechanical sound spectrograms.