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On Jan 24, 2006, at 8:50 PM, Jim Henry wrote:
Let's see.... what about ui and iu? Those would be allowed after the initial consonant cluster, & sound fairly distinct from the corresponding diphthongs, I guess: kuim <> kwim viulu <> vyulu
Yes, I think so. Probably not too many available borrowings in that shape, but I could be wrong. Piano > pyano, for example, to preserve the stress we want. And it might be good to prohibit ui and iu from that first syllable just in case, though. 'kuim' might sound like 'kuym' to some ears, and 'viulu' like 'viwlu.'
That sounds good. Maybe a good way to express it would be: "A pair of adjacent vowels including a |u| or |i| can only occur in such a position that the first of the two vowels is the nucleus of the first syllable, and thus takes the primary stress. This ensures that the word will be audibly distinct from a possible alternate word identical except for having |w| or |y| where the first word has |u| or |i|." <then give examples of actual/possible minimal pairs with diphthong in first syllable, and forbidden minimal pairs with diphthong in second or later syllable>
Sounds just right.
This would be a good time to revisit the thread of a few months ago about rules for permissible initial and medial consonant clusters, and finally specify those rules. (I seem to recall we talked about possible rules but you didn't settle on anything definite.) -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry Yahoo! Groups Links
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