I should say in advance that I have become more concerned with the logical form and semantics of Xorban than in its exact phonological realization and orthography, so consider the following simply my two cents and not something that I am really motivated to argue over.
On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 11:02 AM, And Rosta
<and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
Mike S., On 16/09/2012 03:06:
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 15, 2012 at 3:47 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email
> <mailto: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
I wouldn't take that for granted. It partly depends on the extent to which Xorban is conceived of as a reform of Lojban. To me it is to no extent a reform of Lojban, whereas clearly to Jorge it is, because Jorge's borrowing a lot of the phonological and morphological patterning from Lojban.
> with <q>/<'> being the glottal stop?
Apparently.
> Moderate stress on the first vowel of the variable sequence?
Unnecessary; it has no contrastive value.
The morphology self-segregates by segments alone so suggesting a stressing rule would be merely to provide a conventional prosody. It wouldn't be a hard rule and wouldn't hold in names.
We have not discussed whether there will be tone, but -- assuming that if there were tone it would have low tone only on all word-final syllables -- having tone would affect the word boundary rules; word-final CVs could also be word-initial without ambiguity. So far we've been assuming that word-final CVs can't be word-initial.
Well, sure. And if we had clicks, we wouldn't be as quickly filling up of operator space. That's not a serious proposal; I'm just pointing out that given a tone-based SSM, everything that we now have could easily change beyond recognition.
> What is the phonological value of <h>, which I have been using
> experimentally?
Nothing but [x, h] makes any sense.
Agreed, and probably only one of /x h/ should be allowed. The other alternative is that /h/ is pronounced as the breathy-voiced glottal fricative which is how I suspect most English speakers are pronouncing Lojban <'> anyway, but that's a tricky sound cross-linguistically, isn't it. I remember some Eastern European saying on the Lojban list that he was using [G] for <'>, which I take as another indication that contrastive /h x/ is problematic.
> Voiced velar fricative?
I have been assuming that is the value of <x>.
I cannot help noting that that would make Jorge's Xorban name, spelled as it is, sound like the name of an orc, but I understand the reasoning behind what you're proposing. "Jorge" would be "hrhe" and <x>=[G] would fill a gap in the putative phonology. Then again, with [x] and whatever <'> is already on the table, adding [G] really starts to make things crowded.
> 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.
The orthographic weirdness is a problem. Furthermore, we have assigned <'> as an allograph of <q>, [?], and therefore bcda'afga'a is not "bcda'a fga'a" but rather "bcda 'afga'a".
Isn't <x> as [G] also weird? I can't think of any language that does that. And while I'm board with <'> as [?] especially for the quotative function, <q> as [?] is pretty much limited to Maltese, isn't it? Yes I know you want to assign the most reasonable values to these extra letters; just saying.
My preference is for allowing VVVV sequences and not using up a consonant on a vowel separator. If there were a consonant used as a vowel separator, [h] is too marked in that environment, and the separator should be <q> or <r>, the least marked in that environment. Using q would scupper the neat idea of using it as the name delimiter, so <r> would be the best choice for vowel separator.
Ironically, I don't think breathy-voiced /h/ would be too marked, because it's almost a vowel itself. It'd just be a hardship on a lot of people. I agree with using <q> for names if <q>=[?].
Really, the language as it is is speakable and has a clear SSM. If Jorge wants to keep things Lojban-looking then the only thing that IMHO needs actual fixing is the /h x/ distinction. I would recommend scrapping "x-" as an operator and making <'> and <x> allographs of the same phoneme. A slightly more complex proposal is to change <x> to <h>=[x], reintroduce <x>=[G], and forbid <h x> from being operators. Then <'> would be the neutralization of /x G/ between vowels and could be realized as any velar or glottal fricative [x G h h\] preferred by the speaker.
The system Jorge has in mind is for 6 rather than 7 vowels, no [y]. Strict CV phonotactics and no consonant-vowels. Plus a vowel-separator C.
The system I have in mind is for 7 vowels. Phonotactics are that vowels must be flanked by consonants; and i & u are both vowels and consonants. The role of vowel separator is taken over by i & u, sometimes contrasting (after a) and sometimes not, for I would also disallow /eu/, /yu/, /oi/, /uu/, /ii/. In Jorge's system [eIui] would be ambiguous between /e yu wi/ and /e wi/, [eIuia] between /e yu wi ya/ and /e wi ya/ and /e yu ya/ and /e wu ya/ -- a proper mess. In my scheme, [eIuia] could only be /eiuia/.
I might also consider allowing /i@, u@/, orthographically <ii, uu> in some environments, maybe any preconsonantal environment.
I agree with you on the basic seven vowels /a e i o u w y/=[a E i O u y 9] where /y/ could also be [@] and /a/ is any low vowel. I would say that /i u/ could be underlyingly semivowels or glides which I will symbolize as [I U] or consonants [j w], but can also be realized as a sequence of vowel and consonant. Yes they serve as separators. I would constrain vowel strings composed of /a e i o u/ as follows: No geminates which means no /ii uu/; no sequences of two non-high vowels /ae ao/ etc. However everything else is allowed with the following sanctioned phonetic variation:
1) After a non-high vowel, /i u/ is pronounced [I U], but may also be pronounced [ji wu].
i.e. each of /ai au ei eu oi ou/ = [aI aU EI EU OI OU] or [aji awu Eji Ewu Oji Owu] respectively.
2) Before any vowel, /i u/ pronounced [I U] or [j w], but may also be pronounced [ij uw]
i.e. each of /ia ua iu ui/ etc. = [Ia Ua Iu Ui] etc. or [ija uwa iju uwi] etc. respectively.
3) between two vowels, /i u/ are pronounced [I U] or more likely [j w], though even [jij wuw] is allowed.
The second rule facilitates sequences like /Tia Pua/ where P is a labial obstruent and T is a coronal obstruent. So /tia pua/ can be [tija puwa].
As far as /w y/ which slightly confusingly are [y 9] as in Loglan, although I know one is going to agree with this, I would use them in stems in the following way.
stem := (y) root (y root)*
root := C (w) C ( (w) C )*
/y/ would not be elidable, but /w/ would always be optional between any two consonants within a root without changing the meaning of that root. I would rebuild the lexicon from the ground up so that all "native" roots would be further constrained such that all <w> are easily (by SAE/Lojban standards) elidable. In other words native roots would be constrained by:
root:= (L) (F) (P) (P) (F) (L)
P := p | b | t | d | k | g
F := f | v | s | z | c | j | x
L := m | n | l | r
where a root contains at least two C and doesn't contain a geminate, doesn't contain nonhomorganic nasal-obstruent cluster, doesn't contain a voicing disagreement between adjacent obstruents. Non-native roots could be any sequence of two or more C with "w" buffering where needed. So "trnsrs" could be tyrannosaurus, etc. with <w>s implicit.
> 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.
Jorge's yi would be [i], unambiguous in isolation, but it leads to an overly feeble contrast between /i/ and /iyi/.
Are you sure? [ji] is not impossible to produce or perceive as long the first segment is maximally raised and the second lowered or diphthongized slightly, it just seems to be a minor hardship on some folks.
> 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.>
Lojban attitudinals begin with q followed by a vowel.