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on 2/27/02 10:03 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > Regarding glides, I don't think they should coexist with certain types > of vowel combinations. It's too difficult to distinguish the following > pairs in connected speech: > > bua bwa By the rules as they stand, these two would be clearly different: BOO-ah and BWAH > bau baw These would be different, but not different enough to suit me BAH-oo and BAW. The first would tend to squish into the second, so I'd prohibit the first. > bai bay BAH-ee and BAY Prohibit the bai > bia bya > BEE-ah and BYAH > My tendency would be to simply drop the glides, as that would make the > rule simpler. Then you could have <w> and <y> for other purposes. (I > recall that we tried <w> as a vowel and didn't like the look of > it--neither of us being Welsh, I suppose.) Hm. If by drop the glides you mean the sound as well as the letters, then there will be no diphthongs. Rather than go that far, I'd be willing to complicate the rules to say that ai, ei, oi, au, and eu automatically form diphthongs and are therefore single syllables. If we do that, 'dia' can exist, pronounced 'DEE-ah', but 'dya' cannot, pronounced 'DYAH.' Or, we can say that i and w before a vowel becomes a glide, therefore eliminating DEE-ah, which I'd hate to do. > > Also, do you expect nCnN to be true in practice? If not, why not > narrow it down? Try listing all reasonable combinations, then look for > a relatively compact set of rules. But I would prefer a more complex > set of rules yeilding fewer bizarre possibilities such as /bdomen/ and > /kfey/--not to mention the theoretical possibility of horrors such as > /ksbqrmnlq/ or /bpbpbpqmqmqm/. That I will do next. I'll use Italian as the model. > > Unlike syntax, the complexity of the morphophonemic rules shouldn't > have any practical impact on speakers, but only on those who are > creating new morphemes, which is not something that has to be done on > the fly. Good point. -- >PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: rmay@hidden.email > Rex F. May (Baloo) > Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp > Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/gdummy.htm > Language site at: http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Uploadexp.htm >Discuss my auxiliary language at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txeqli/