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Re: [engelang] Self-segmenting words & the treatment of names



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Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 01:13:08 -0400
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> > What's a good way to handle names in a self-segmenting
> > engelang that constitutes an optimal balance between (a) preserving
> > self-segmentation, (b) distorting the original name as little as
> > possible, and (c) concision.
> 
> Bracketing will rate you an A+ for both (a) and (b), and something less
> for (c).  For example, in Katanda, the proper name "Joe Q. Schmoe" can
> be rendered as "Ka<Joe Q. Schmoe>byo", where prefix "ka" indicates a
> proper name, the left and right arrows are the brackets, and "byo"
> indicates that the word is the name of a person (as opposed to country,
> river, corporation, etc).
> 
> For speech applications, you'll need some way of representing the
> brackets.  However, even so, the speech-analyzer is likely to have
> problems with whatever appears between the brackets since it won't
> conform with the self-segregation rules.

I think that in speech a pair of verbal brackets such that the first would 
indicate "the following phonetic string is a (foreign/borrowed) name", 
and the ending bracket would indicate whether the name is a Proper/
personal name, a corporation or other legal entity, collective, etc.,
would be sufficient.

Bfowol
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