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Bfowol: > > > 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. But the downsides are (i) you're adding two syllables to every name, and even though the end-bracket is informative on first use in the discourse it ceases to be so, and (ii) you need a fall-back plan for if any of the end-bracket markers occur internally within the name. (Cf. the Lojban "no /la/ in names" rule, which causes no end of trouble.) --And.