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X-Mailer: CoreCommMail X-IPAddress: 169.207.133.163 Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 23:11:42 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > 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. Ah. point taken - certainly (i) runs counter to conciseness. I can't think of a really good alternative for (ii) - one could certainly pick phonemic strings that might be disallowed in some major languages, but one runs the risk that (a) a name from a lesser known language might use the string (so even clicks would not necessarily be sufficient) and any string that would be outside of the majority of natlangs would likely be so phonetically unusual as to fall outside of most acceptable phoneme inventories - eg the use of Damin's ingressive lateral plus vowel as a final bracket morpheme, /-l*V/. This seems to bring us back to a vowel harmony scheme like JC's xuxuxi, or adapting a name to the closest acceptable phonemic form allowed by the target conlang. I assume there must be other options, just can't come up with any now. Off to cogitate on this a bit... Bfowol ------- "Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." -Charles Fisher CoreComm Webmail. http://home.core.com