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on 2/10/03 1:34 PM, Rob Speer at rspeer@hidden.email wrote: > On Mon, Feb 10, 2003 at 12:51:09PM -0700, Rex May - Baloo wrote: >> Very good reasoning. A couple of points: >> rV and yV are not possible as Ceqli morphs because of the phonology rules, >> alas. >> XI - SA - ZO would be my choice, too, except that they're all three going to >> appear a lot as the last element of a compound. Tho unstressed 'a' at the >> end of a word is permitted, it is discouraged, lest it tend towards schwa, >> which is an allophone of unstressed 'e'. Consequently, from all of this >> imput, it seems pretty clear that the winner is XI - SU - ZO > > I really have to wonder why you made schwa an allophone of 'e'. Sure, it > makes 'be' slightly easier to say, but the problem with 'a' is going to > keep coming up. I agonized a long time, believe me. I finally went with German phonology/spelling as a guide. The problem, as I saw it, was that I wanted a set of Consonant+schwa unstressed words -- be, ke, te, se, etc., and I didn't want to make the words ba, pa, ta, etc. unstressed. Finally, a lot of people tell me that with Ceqli as it was, it was hard to distinguish between the unstressed endings -e and -ey. Consequently, in most loan words that end with an unstressed -a, I figure on replacing it with -e. And any that continue with the -a ending should be pronounced as a German would do it. I figure future Ceqli will have a different alphabet, anyway, and there will be a symbol for schwa. But as it is, I only had five vowels to work with! Thanks for the input. -- >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/ceqli/