On Apr 24, 2006, at 10:29 AM, HandyDad wrote: --- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Henry" <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
On 4/23/06, Rex May <rmay@...> wrote:
rules. Currently, the rule is stress the first syllable. That may be the optimum way to do it. (And I shouldn't really be saying 'words', but 'morphemes').
Are morphemes stressed the same independently of whether they stand alone or are in a compound word?
I've often felt that Tceqli could distinguish compounds from discrete words by an application of stress. Perhaps a level or unstressed profile for core words and a non-level profile for compounds. Admittedly, stress is not ironclad, but it can be a useful clue when combined with other clues (presence of little words, knowledge of lexicon).
Does the pattern I described in my reply to Jimzo make sense to you?
I've also considered penultimate stress, which works okay, and having stress fall on the last syllable that doesn't end in a vowel. I wonder if my propensities are confusing me. A word like 'kanor' seems like it should be stressed on the last syllable, no matter the rule. And a word like 'himel', seems to need stress on the first syllable. Am I reacting to some intrinsic linguistic tendency here, or am I just exporting my own prejudices.
I don't have any problem with /'ka.nor/; it seems as good as /ka.'nor/ if not better, so I don't think it can be a strong intrinsic tendency if it two native speakers of the same language can differ in their inclination so.
Ditto in reverse. Second-syllable stress on both those words seems natural to me. And I even lived for seven years in Colorado, just 90 minutes south of Rex, so it clearly isn't anything intrinsic even to regional accents.
Good. Of course, my regional accent is Indiana, much like Festus.
If the former, perhaps Tceqli should have slightly more complicated stress rules.
This is probably a bad idea. Auxlangs should have a simple stress rule; of the ones I've tried, first syllable and penultimate syllable seem more euphonious than last syllable. Though maybe better still is to have even stress as in Japanese, or design the language so that speakers can stress whatever syllables they like and still be understandable -- I think your self-segregation rule for Tceqli probably accomplishes that, but we would need face-to-face conversational testing to be sure.
I generally agree. The one area where I get lost in Tceqli is that I lose track of where I am syntactically, sometimes because I've interpreted a compound as distinct words.
When I retire (in 81 days), I hope to be able to do a lot more sustained thinking about all this. I'm sticking with the notion that Tceqli has two extreme forms — the precise and the terse. That of course is the source of the compounding problem, as 'sa' serves quite well to handle the problem in precise Tceqli. This is all part of my reaction to Loglan, which has precision, but no terseness. I can see an exchange.
Pri, fayrcari?
Kya?
Go pri ko zi, ke zi don ko go te fayrcari.
Loglan can't stretch that way.
Rex May rmay@hidden.email See some of my cartoons at: NOW UPDATED REGULARLY!
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