From nellardo@concentric.net Wed Jul 19 08:01:44 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 26690 invoked from network); 19 Jul 2000 15:01:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 19 Jul 2000 15:01:20 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO darius.concentric.net) (207.155.198.79) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 Jul 2000 15:01:20 -0000 Received: from mcfeely.concentric.net (mcfeely.concentric.net [207.155.198.83]) by darius.concentric.net (8.9.1a/(98/12/15 5.12)) id LAA13694; Wed, 19 Jul 2000 11:01:19 -0400 (EDT) [1-800-745-2747 The Concentric Network] Errors-To: Received: from concentric.net ([216.112.226.144]) by mcfeely.concentric.net (8.9.1a) id LAA25766; Wed, 19 Jul 2000 11:00:50 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3953CF7C.850D3FFA@concentric.net> Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 16:58:46 -0400 Reply-To: nellardo@concentric.net Organization: Herds of Wild Buffalo Girls X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Symmetry of Lojban phonology [ was Re: [lojban] on Lojban pronunciation ] References: <4.2.2.20000622180643.00b411b0@127.0.0.1> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Brook Conner "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" wrote: [ ... on /x/ being in a lang designed by English speakers ... ] > With that collection of languages (Greek, German, Russian, Celtic, > Arabic/Semitic), as well as the linguistic analysis, it is very > unsurprising that 'x' showed up. The real debate was whether we should > include for symmetry the voiced and unvoiced pair of velar fricatives, just > as we had pairs for all the rest of the unvoiced consonants, but we decided > that this would indeed be difficult to teach to the poor English speakers > %^). %^) indeed. I noticed this particular lack of voiced/unvoiced symmetry when laying out an alternative lojban orthography using Tolkien's Tengwar (originally done independently of Eric Raymond's, now done in light of it, but with some differing decisions). If you ignore any "traditional" letter assignments to tengwar, and simply follow a grid arranged (roughly) so: labial dental palatal velar stops voiced b d g unvoiced p t k fricatives voiced v z j unvoiced f s c x nasals m n liquids/semivowels l r Seventeen consonants, plus five vowels, plus y, is the 24 regular letters. Then the pause ".", and the vowel separator "'", and finally, the "," for removing vowel dipthongs. Use the tehtar for the vowels. A medial dot is consistent with tengwar punctuation for a pause, the long carrier for "'", and the short for ",", and two dots for "y". So you find that the consonants, with very few gaps, neatly fill the space. The lack of a voiced velar fricative is the one noted as a concession to English speakers :-) I suspect the use of /ng/ as allophonic for /n/ is another one, and there goes the palatal nasal. As for the lack of a labial or palatal liquid or semivowel, as I recall, Loglan had a "w" and a consonantal "y", which would have filled in those spots. I suspect that those were dropped to maximize separation between the liquids, as several major languages treat them as allophonic. > So I believe we defined the language to allow the voiced velar > fricative as an allophone for the unvoiced one, though I haven't ever heard > anyone use it. Doesn't Klingon have a voiced velar fricative or two? :-) As for the difference between my Tengwar orthography and ESR's, I find I esthetically prefer the use of tehtar for vowels from the approaches typified by the Mode of Beleriand and other human modes. But then I have Quenya tattooed on my arm, so maybe I'm different that way. A couple of further notes: This particular mode does provide for some visual distinction between cmavo and gismu, even compound cmavo and lujvo - it uses the vowel-following convention for tehtar location - as most lojban words end in a vowel, this seemed correct. A second vowel would go under the tengwar, unless preceeded by ', in which case it would go over a long carrier (no problems with missing a ' there!) A greater visual distinction (and more visual variety in the script) could be provided by using different tengwar for cmavo and for brivla. With the compactness of the consonantal mapping above, there are enough letters even in Tolkien's attested tengwar for *two* sets of consonants. Pick one for cmavo, and use the other for brivla. Brook