From nessus@free.fr Wed Oct 02 00:31:09 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: nessus@free.fr X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_1_4); 2 Oct 2002 07:31:08 -0000 Received: (qmail 83850 invoked from network); 2 Oct 2002 07:31:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 2 Oct 2002 07:31:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mel-rto2.wanadoo.fr) (193.252.19.254) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 2 Oct 2002 07:31:08 -0000 Received: from mel-rta8.wanadoo.fr (193.252.19.79) by mel-rto2.wanadoo.fr (6.5.007) id 3D89D999006D6D56 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 09:31:08 +0200 Received: from ftiq2awxk6 (193.248.42.33) by mel-rta8.wanadoo.fr (6.5.007) id 3D8011E300AFBD23 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 09:31:08 +0200 Message-ID: <006d01c269e7$6dccdee0$212af8c1@ftiq2awxk6> To: "Lojban List" References: <001001c26970$fc618ba0$8beef8c1@ftiq2awxk6> <20021001221733.GA5137@piclab.com> Subject: Re: [lojban] gizmu Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 09:13:48 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 From: "Lionel Vidal" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=47678341 X-Yahoo-Profile: cmacinf > This is not an example of speaker laziness, but of bad language > design; encoding meanings into sounds that are not well-suited to > the organs that produce them. A properly engineered language would > not "suffer" from such assimilations, but would assume them as a > requirement for its design. >From a strict phonetic point of view, this seems unrealistic: all known languages used in speaking meet, given time, some phonetic erosion (assimilation is just an example of what can happen). You could say that no language has been yet properly designed, but even if could map all possible erosion mechanisms (something impossible in practice), I am not sure that the phonetic space will be large enough to design something that could not be eroded. (and this language would be very difficult to articulate, with any consecutive phoneme having an articulation scheme different enough to prevent erosion: fluency would probably requires surgery :-) But to come back to assimilation, this is not really a default as people tend to not assimilate what they feel will result in a practical morphological or semantical ambiguity. This is the main reason for the assimilation rule exceptions. -- Lionel