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Re: [engelang] Xorban: parentheticals and interjections

On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 3:47 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote: 
 
Even if all phonological forms are interim, I'd rather not use w & y in this way, partly because I would be against making wa distinct from what we have currently been writing as u'a, but which I would rather start writing as ua, given that I can't envisage any unsilly phonological status for <'>, and also that I'm in favour of Mike's idea of <'> being an allograph of <q>, and partly because I'm in favour of y being an extra vowel.

So I'd go for either assigning an unassigned C to interjections, e.g. q, or else partioning cV so that c + certain Vs are or begin interjections while c + the other Vs are or begin illocutionaries that have a complement.

What is the current consensus-in-flux phonology in a nutshell? I assume mostly like Lojban with <q>/<'> being the glottal stop?  Moderate stress on the first vowel of the variable sequence?  What is the phonological value of <h>, which I have been using experimentally? Voiced velar fricative?  In that case guess <r> will have to be an alveolar rhotic, which is fine since most of the contributors speak English or Spanish and not French or German.  I don't like that uvular throat-clearing sound anyway; I'd prefer a nice Scottish or Spanish trill if aesthetics count for anything. 

I don't think there's a problem with <'> being [h] (which gives us 25 extra variables) other than its stunning orthographic weirdness, so long as <x> is used in predicates but left unassigned for operators.  Otherwise CCCi xi is going to clash with CCCi'i.  This is definitely an issue, download Audacity and try it for yourself.

I am pretty sure I and And agree on the phonotactics of <y w>.  If we are going to use these for interjections, I don't like *yi or *wu, but those are easily replaced with yay and waw.  It seems like a waste of variables to me, but the Lojban crowd seems to dig their attitudinals, and I am actually starting to almost think 30 V/V'V variables total *is* enough, so maybe it's a good thing for the future Xorban sales brochure to have Lojban-like attitudinals.