Re: Optimum number of symbols

At 12:00 am -0400 27/5/02, Roger Mills wrote:
>Ray Brown wrote: (re VERY interesting discussion of Chinese, with snips))
Thanks  :)
[snip]
>
>Presumably much of this results from numerous mergers along the way?
Presumably so - but, alas, I am very au fait with the diachronic
development of modern Mandarin.  I believe there are some on the list with
a least some knowledge of this.

>Reminiscent of a system I played around with some time back, which would
>have had only one "phonemic" vowel, /@/.  The many consonants could be
>plain, labialized or palatalized.  /Cw@/ = [Cu], /Cj@/= [Ci]; IIRC /@/ > [a]
>or [@] after Plain C depending on the consonant.
I'm told languages with just one phonemic vowel, i.e. [@], do exist.
According to some, PIE was like this (tho some theorists, I understand,
claim it has _no_ phonemic vowels!!)

>Some of this survives in the nascent Gwr language; except it has 9 vowels,
>most of which (except /r/ [3^]) can also diphthongize, falling with /j, 1,
>q/, and rising with /j, w/-- but certain combinations > long vowel, e.g.
>/wu/, /uw/, /ij/, /ji/, /a1/, /E1/, /O1/  et al.
>
>So the question is whether the abugida will distinguish |pji| and |pij|,
>both [pi:]....
>Technically, I think it's also possible to have /jij/, which is another
>problem......
Good grief - you like to give yourself problems  :)

But if both /pji/ and /pij/ are pronounced [pi:], don't we have a case
where phonemic difference has been neutralized?  My own feeling is that an
abugida would mark only [pi:] - but I'm not an expert with abugidas.

Ray.



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Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
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