[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Mike S., On 17/09/2012 22:05:
On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 3:15 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email <mailto:and.rosta@hidden.email>> wrote:Possibly. I'd be interested to see whatever you cook up.One idea would be for the variable-marking Vs to be intercalated among the Cs, with /@/=o'e (& allowing /@/ to bear contrastive tone). This supposes that function words contain one C and things with multiple Cs are predicates. Orthographic spaces would distinguish /C@-lo/ <C > from /C@-hi/ < C>. The virtue of that scheme is that it saves syllables by not requiring overt o'e that is present only for grammatical reasons and by replacing @s by Vs rather than adding Vs. Interesting. So the number of consonants is at least as great as that of arguments, and usually greater since most predicates have one or two arguments. The consonants without arguments always have /(@)/. How would places be counted? They could start from the first consonant go forward or from the last going backward i.e. patf = A's a father, ptef = E has a father versus ptfa, ptef.
ptfa, ptef, given the unelidability of the final vowel.
One possible problem is that /@-lo/ unlike /@-hi/ can never be elided -- maybe put X1 in the final position in order to try to forestall the temptation to do so (X1 the least likely argument to be elided)?
Yes, and also allocate to x1 the role least likely to be implicit, maybe. It would be nice to find some scheme that allows all schwas to be elided, but I can't see how that cd be possible.
We could design the lexicon, but leave the phonological shape of roots unspecified. That is, you'd decide on the meanings and on the adicity and possibly on whether the stem should be a compound of certain other stems, with the phonology left till later.That's a good idea. It wouldn't hurt for people to start thinking about that now.
It'd be great to have a core lexicon selected on the basis of utility and systematicity. It needs somebody with surplus time and energy -- lots of labour involved. I suppose one could start by going through the gismu, throwing away unnecessary gismu and sumti places, maybe noting possible instances where roots could comfortably be replaced by compounds, and adding predicates known to be missing. (Jorge must have a list of missing ones. The only one I remember from my days of Lojban using is "intend".)
As far as <h>, there is some precedence for it standing for [h\], so maybe that should be the letter assigned to [G], if that phoneme where added, leaving <x> for [h] or [x].<x> for [x, h]. Is [h\] a pharyngeal fricative? If so, that's hard to pronounce in a way integrated into the rest of the speech stream, and unlike [G] it doesn't fill a systemic gap. [h\] is the breathy-voiced glottal fricative. Czech uses <h> for [h\] which contrasts with Czech <ch>=/x/=[x]. Czech ostensibly lacks a /G/, but one could arguably analyze Czech <h> as a lenited form of /G/ -> [h\] in which case Czech <ch>=/x/=[x] would have its expected voiced counterpart in <h>=/G/=[h\] after all. What I think you are proposing is: the phoneme /x/ would be [x, h] and the phoneme /G/ would be simply [G]. Czech allows one to make the case that <h> has a natlang precedent for representing the phoneme /G/ whereas <x> seems to have none. As for <x>, we have seen that used for [x] in Spanish. Given the above, <x> for /x/ = [x, h] and <h> for /G/ = [G] probably has a stronger case than the reverse. In addition, it would preserve the value of <x> inherited from Lojban; I know that doesn't carry a lot of weight with you of course.
Sorry for not checking CXS. If I had, I'd have understood your point. Yes, your point makes sense. If the phonemes are [G, h\] and [x, h]. i.e. voiced and voiceless posterior fricatives, then it seems pretty much 50--50 which one gets [h] and which one gets [x]. On the one hand, voiced h & voiceless x is supported by the precedent of Czech for h and IPA and modern Greek chi for x. On the other hand, voiceless h & voiced x is supported by the canonical value of h and the intrinsic status of x as an oddball letter.
Right. We both know where the Lojban list is if we want to talk about Lojban's specification. ObXorban: How would that last sentence be translated in Xorban? Is there some odd illocutionary operator that we don't have yet involved?I'd use the ordinary assertion marker, "ci" I think it is. Is that what you were asking, or were you asking what would be the xorban for the whole sentence? I'll rephrase: What is roughly the logical form of, and what does the if-clause modify in, "We both know where the Lojban list is if we want to talk about Lojban's specification."
I think the logical form is simply "All cases in which we want to talk about Lojban's specification are cases in which we know where the Lojban list is". la fa [we want to talk about Lojban's specification] va [we know where Lojban list is] tta [I can't remember what Jorge had suggested for tt- "all"] BTW, I would replace v- by nuk-, to fee up v- & make the kinship with nu apparent. --And.