Re: More thoughts on BrSc orthography & phonology

At 12:05 am +0100 17/4/02, And Rosta wrote:
>Ray:
>> Comments please.
>
>I find the ideas very engaging,
Good - two positive responses so far   :)

>but they also confuse my sense of
>what BrSc's goals and priorities are. For instance, the scheme
>seems to be getting too baroque for IAL-hood;
That's what I want to get responses about.  What I outlined was
considerably less 'baroque' than Srikanth's Lin, but have I gone too far?

>but at the same time,
>any real achievements in brevity are going to require what from
>a natlangoid perspective looks like baroqueness.
Yes, but the two goals of (i) brevity (using the Roman script) and (ii)
IAL-hood were those of Reginald Dutton when he designed and developed
Speedwords.  It was as a result of dissatisfaction with his solution that
work on BrSc began.  There clearly has to be compromise and trade off
between the two goals - that's the challenge.

>As another
>example, the goals of elegant and creative use of the roman
>miniscules and of having c. 2000 compoundable roots don't seem to
>fall out either from the brevity goal or the IAL goal.
These are _not_ goals of BrSc.

I use the Roman alphabet solely for pragmatic reasons: it is the most
widely used alphabet in the world.  Ideally, I would like to create my own
but that would go against the goal of IAL-hood.  Indeed, if brevity were
the sole aim, I use some form of shorthand.  The use of (mainly) lower-case
is, again, for purely practical reasons. It's certainly not a goal.

If you deem my ideas on use of Roman minuscules 'elegant and creative',
then I'm flattered.  It's not a goal, but if I achieved it, I would not be
displeased.

As for c. 2000 compoundable roots - methinks there's been some
misunderstanding.  That is most certainly *not* a goal of BrSc.  Indeed,
it's the desire to avoid arbitrary and unnecessary compounding that led me
to suggest the present 'baroque' ideas - so that I have something that gave
me far more possibilities for root words.  The c.2000 is what my earlier
system contrained me to have - not what I would've wanted.  It's to break
that constraint that I came up with the present ideas.

>Of all the
>ideas you're playing around with, I find the brevity one the most
>interesting,
>but as you say, this goal is tempered by others, but
>in a way I don't fully grasp.
Brevity, using the Roman script, tempered only by IAL-hood (which Dutton's
schemes were also tempered by) and by clear morpheme segregation -
_nothing_ else.

Lin, as far as I can see, does have self-segregating morphemes, even tho
this does not seem to have been an explicit aim of its author.

[snip]
>
>> But, using the idea of vowel harmony, I am proposing a 'disemy' (two
>> meanings), e.g. {pt} would mean one thing with front vowels and another
>> with back vowels.
>
>This does not really seem like disemy to me; if it were disemy, the
>dictionary would contain an entry for {pt} that would list two
>meanings. But why should the dictionary not simply list separately
>pt+fron and pt+back?
Yes - I agree.  You note I put 'disemy' between quotes.  I was using it in
the same way that Srikanth uses enneasemy.  In fact what you say about {pt}
above seems to me could be said about enneasemy in Lin.  Srikanth does
indeed list, e.g. nine meanings against the word {h}.  I quote:
"h: happy, tall, heavy; animate being, station, test; have, keep, rise"

But these meanings must be listed in the above order because the short
lexicon is prefaced with an explanation how to read off the meanings.  Why
should not a dictionary simply list separately:
h (A, 1) = happy
h (A, 2) = tall
h (A, 3) = heavy
h (N, 1) = animate being
h (N, 2) = station
h (N, 3) = test
h (V, 1) = (to) have
h (V, 2) = (to) keep
h (V, 3) = (to) rise

The numbers refer to Lin's "generations" which are shown by differences in
pronunciation.  My 'pt+front' & 'pt+back' can be considered as
'generations' in the sense of Lin generations.  What I haven't done is to
give the same form different meanings according to it's part of speech.

Ray.


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