Re: Vowel Harmony Asthetically Pleasing?

Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> On Sunday, December 26, 2004, at 11:57 , Joe wrote:
>
> > Tristan McLeay wrote:
> >
> >> On 26 Dec 2004, at 9.25 pm, Joe wrote:
> >>
> >>>> Adam F. wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> I am looking for opinions. Who finds vowel harmony in general to be
> >>>>> asthetically pleasing and what do you think of my sketch?
> >>>>
> >>
> >> I've never done a conlang with vowel harmony. 'M not too sure I like
> >> it...
> [snip]
>
> > Well, I do like them in a posteriori languages.  They're nice and
> > naturalistic.  In an a priori language, though, where you're working on
> > the basis of what is probably and alien script (or no script at all),
> > I'm a fan of efficiency.
>
> Eh? What is _inefficient_ about vowel harmony?
It's perhaps not what Tristan meant, but it's inefficient in the sense it
decreases the numbers of valid words; a language without back-front harmony
might have all of törüm, torüm, törum and torum, while one with can only have
törüm and torum. Clearly, a language that wanted to maximize the number of
distinct polysyllabic language shouldn't use it.

                                                Andreas