From arosta@uclan.ac.uk Mon Apr 29 08:59:55 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: arosta@uclan.ac.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_3_1); 29 Apr 2002 15:59:55 -0000 Received: (qmail 76220 invoked from network); 29 Apr 2002 15:59:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m12.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 29 Apr 2002 15:59:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO com1.uclan.ac.uk) (193.61.255.3) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 29 Apr 2002 15:59:53 -0000 Received: from gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk by com1.uclan.ac.uk with SMTP (Mailer); Mon, 29 Apr 2002 16:20:39 +0100 Received: from DI1-Message_Server by gwise-gw1.uclan.ac.uk with Novell_GroupWise; Mon, 29 Apr 2002 16:46:08 +0100 Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 5.5.2 Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 16:44:52 +0100 To: lojban Subject: RE: [lojban] What's the logic behind Lojban's sound system? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline From: And Rosta X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810630 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Craig: #>The phonology of /'/ and /@/, where /@/ =3D buffer vowel is so stupid #>-- so unlike anything in natlangs -- that it is simply indefensible. # #/@/ is NOT a buffer vowel, it is {y}. It's important to remember that symbols enclosed by slash brackets // are in principle arbitrary. There is a convention -- far from universally observed -- of, for mnemonic purposes, choosing a symbol that corresponds to the IPA symbol for the primary allophone of that phoneme, but that is no more than one factor among others that determine choices of phoneme symbolization. As you can see, in choosing how to symbolize Lojban phonemes, I prefer to use not IPA symbols but Lojban orthography, so writing the vowel as /y/. Add to that that when I wrote '@' I meant at-sign/escargot, not sch= wa. The point is, that for the buffer vowel we need a symbol that does *not= * correspond to anything in IPA, precisely because it has no canonical allo= phone. (I myself use [y], but that is a personal act of desperation.) --And.