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--- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@g...> wrote: > Rex May - Baloo <rmay@m...> wrote: > > on 5/6/05 12:40 PM, Jim Henry at jacklongshadow@b... wrote: snip > > > This page glosses "C" and "J" as alveolar affricates, but > > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ceqli/message/1318 > > > describes them as plain fricatives. Which is correct? > > > > > This has changed a couple of time. At this point, and I'm sure it'll stay > > that way, x = /S/, c = /tS/, and j = /dZ/. There is no letter for plain > > /Z/. Can't fit it in with the 26 letters, and I thought it the least useful > > of the consonant sounds. > > I'm not sure what you mean by "least useful". I have several > affricates in my own conlang, and I have sometimes thought that, > if I were willing to redesign a lot of words, eliminating the affricates > (or maybe having a contrast only between unvoiced fricatives > and voiced affricates) would make a lot of morphemes more > readily distinguishable. So, for instance, contrast /S/ with /dZ/ > and leave out /Z/ and /tS/, and ditto with the palatal and bilabial > fricatives/affricates... But I've started attaining some real > fluency in it, so I don't want to scrap dozens of words I've > already learned and make new ones. My reasoning was thus: Among the large languages likely to deliver a lot of vocabulary to Ceqli, none seem to contrast /Z/ and /dZ/ except, to a very minor degree, English. Chinese, Hindi, Spanish (in some dialects only), French, Japanese, Russian, Indonesian, Portuguese, Arabic (I think) and Italian have one or the other but not both. German and standard Spanish have neither. OTOH, most of these languages do contrast /S/ and /tS/. Not all, but the big three, Chinese, English, and Hindi certainly do. So I opted for /dZ/ and no /Z/ > > > > > ...How is the definite article "to" used? > > > > > I'm afraid I'm relying on instinct here more than knowledge. I originally > > thought "to" would be used like Loglan "le," but since then I've tried to > > Mandarinize a lot of it, and make such words as 'the' more optional. Answer > > is, I'm not sure. Only that it does, perhaps among other things, mean "the > > one already mentioned or known about." Go xaw jino kay jini. To jino gi > > kom. I see a man and a woman. The man is eating. Just saying "Jino gi > > kom" would allow for the possiblity that you're talking about some other > > man. But I'm wide open to suggestions and comments about the the problem. > > I'm not sure I can help with a lot of specifics, but I do strongly > feel that if you're going to have a definite article in an IAL or loglang, > you should define its usage rather than vaguely saying it's > the same as in some natlang. > > Just for one instance of how English article use is irregular, > take words like "God" and "universe". In most contexts, there's only one we > could be talking about, so it doesn't make sense to pick out one > among others; but for some reason we say "God" with no article > and "the universe" with a definite article. Hm. I think in English we regard "God" as a name and "Universe" as a common noun. I'll work on this. Thanks. > > > > "Blu se fawl - Blue bird " > > > > > > Is this a typo for "Blu sa fawl"? You haven't explained "se". "se" > > > also occurs several times unexplained in other contexts (both > > > stand-alone and suffixed) where I would expect "sa" based on what you > > > have said so far. > > > > Yes. For awhile, I considered allowing terminal -e to be pronounced schwa. > > I abandoned that because of likely confusion with with terminal - a. So se > > became sa, and they didn't all get changed. > > OK. I think there are other archaic instances of "se" on various other pages > of your site, too. > > Also: when you next revise the dictionary, I suggest you have an entry > for "se" indicating it is an archaic form of "sa". That way old texts > will still be readable. When Ms. Kisa removed some words from > Toki Pona, she eliminated all mention of them from the official > site, and some older texts would be rather enigmatic if one of the fan sites > did not have a helpful page listing archaic words. Good idea. I'll try to implement it. > > > > "Sala taylho solgu. Recommend, join army." > > > > > > Is "taylho" a typo? You said earlier that the phonology doesn't allow "h" > > > after another consonant. > > > > > No, this is okay. "L" is a weak, not a consonant. > > That brings up another point I was a bit puzzled about. > Do you have any source for this terminology of calling > the stops and fricatives "consonants" and the liquids > and nasals "weaks" (and considering them non-consonants)? > Phonologically, they're still consonants, because they never > form a syllable nucleus as a vowel can. > > It might be clearer to say that words can start with a stop > or fricative, followed by one or more vowels, semivowels, liquids and nasals. Ceqli has three kinds of sounds. I probably erred by calling the ones that can, in clusters of one or more, begin morphemes, "consonants". Because, of course, as you note, it's an unconventional use of the term. I picked 'weak' for lmnqryw's because, as you say, they aren't vowels, but aren't 'strong' enough to begin a morpheme. So I need a name for each of these sounds. Now, Mandarin has "initials" and "finals," but that's not quite what Ceqli breaks down into. To make the rule simple I need a different term for "consonant", I guess, then weaks and vowels and a term for non-consonant. Or perhaps I don't need to distinguish between weaks and vowels at all. Anybody else have any input for this?