Re: brz reloaded!
| From: | R A Brown <ray@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, September 27, 2005, 10:16 |
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Hello all!
Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> Ray and I have recently (and are still) discussing a briefscript/
> loglang hybrid
On the 25th Sep Jörg wrote:
"But I think I'll spend some thought on the
loglang-cum-briefscript-cum-philosophical language based on your brz
phonology."
I see the 'philosophical' bit has been dropped :)
The trouble with 'philosophical' languages is that they get into a
time-lock. The 17th examples of people like Wilkins and Dalgarno embody
ideas that now seem quaint or just plain erroneous. Okamoto's Babm is
based on his "discovery of the truth" when he was 40; it embodies his
own philosophy & will doubtless be seen in centuries to come as stuck
in the 20th century (Babm can BTW serve as a briefscript).
I guess as brz was the result of looking at someone's ideas for a
'near-optimal Loglan' we ought to keep with the loglang idea.
that goes under the provisional name `brz' (ask
> Ray why that name, he suggested it).
It harks back to BrSc, the name given once to my briefscript project on
the Conlang list & one or two other lists. For a brief time it got
transmogrified to _brx_; brz is a slight modification of the latter.
>Here's a brief sketch of my ideas about it.
>
> Phonology
> ---------
>
> This is all Ray's ideas, with my only modifications concerning
> the orthography.
>
> The language has 16 phonemes, written with the following letters:
I don't so. Surely the language has, at most, only 8 consonant
_phonemes_ (the status of the 'zero' consonant will be one of those
jolly things that phonologists can argue about ;)
Surely, what we have is a set of eight letters for each of these
phonemes before a front vowel and a complementary set before back vowels?
Also, you seem to be assuming a "no vowel phoneme" analysis of the
language (it certainly has 4 _phonetic_ vowels). Personally, I think the
4 vowels have phonemic status - they are just not written (a feature not
unknown in Semitic writing).
[snip]
>
> Bits Letter Pronunciation
>
> 0000 j zero followed by a front vowel
Yes, as 0000 must be followed by a front vowel, |j| is much better than
my |'|
> 0001 g [k] followed by a back vowel
I note my use of traditional voiced & voiceless obstruent symbols have
been switched over. Any particular reason?
> 0010 l [l] followed by a front vowel
> 0011 z [s] followed by a back vowel
> 0100 ñ [n] followed by a front vowel
Not very keen on |ñ|. I can see why it has been chosen for /n/ before a
front vowel. But altho the Spaniards count |ñ| as a separate letter, to
many non-Spanish speakers, and certainly to anglophones, it is regarded
as |n| with a diacritic. I really do not want to extend the Roman
alphabet with diacritics.
> 0101 d [t] followed by a back vowel
> 0110 µ [m] followed by a front vowel
I note my use of |m| and |µ| are swapped around. Any reason?
> 0111 b [p] followed by a back vowel
> 1000 p [p] followed by a front vowel
> 1001 m [m] followed by a back vowel
> 1010 t [t] followed by a front vowel
> 1011 n [n] followed by a back vowel
> 1100 s [s] followed by a front vowel
> 1101 r [l] followed by a back vowel
> 1110 k [k] followed by a front vowel
> 1111 h zero followed by a back vowel
>
> When looking closer at this chart, you will notice some regularities.
I hope so :)
[snip]
> Morphology
> ----------
>
> Morphology of brz is self-segregating, if I made no mistake,
> at both the morpheme level and the word level.
Probably need to define what 'word' means in brz.
>The length
> of a morpheme is indicated by the number of consecutive 1s
> at the begin of the morpheme, plus one. (This is the same
> rule as in Plan B.) So, the morpheme length can be told
> by the first phoneme:
>
> Phoneme Bits Morpheme length
>
> j 0000 1
> g 0001 1
> l 0010 1
> z 0011 1
> ñ 0100 1
> d 0101 1
> µ 0110 1
> b 0111 1
> p 1000 2
> m 1001 2
> t 1010 2
> n 1011 2
> s 1100 3
> r 1101 3
> k 1110 4
> h 1111 5+
>
> If the first phoneme of the morpheme is /h/, the sequence of
> consecutive 1s extends to the next phoneme. For example, a
> morpheme beginning with /ht/ is six phonemes long. This way,
> you can have infinitely many morphemes.
This certainly tidies up the mistakes in Jeff's Plan B paper.
>
> A word consists of one root followed by any number of suffixes.
> There are no prefixes. I don't know yet if compounding is
> allowed, but if yes, a special morpheme is inserted between
> the roots to indicate that the second root belongs to the
> same word. Otherwise, a root marks the begin of a new word.
>
> Roots are morphemes with at least five phonemes, i.e.,
This surely is going against the concept of a _briefscript_.
> morphemes beginning with /h/. Thus, all words begin with
> a back vowel.
No - I don't like this root-suffix business as presented. I liked Jeff's
terminology (if I have understood it) where all morphemes are _affixes_.
There is no root-suffix division. Jeff's terminology suggests to me an
_incorporating_ morphology which, by cutting down on 'white space',
could well aid written brevity.
My own gripe is that having talked in terms of "affixes", he then goes
onto to specify 4 single letter 'affixes' are suffixes which specify the
precedence of the word to which they are suffixed. The precedence rules
are needed because in the end Plan B turns out to be just a neat way of
relexifying English in such a way that it can be readily parsed by a
computer. :=(
>
> Syntax
> ------
>
> The syntax of the language is strictly head-initial, left-branching.
> A predicate precedes its arguments. (More to be determined later.)
I would agree that whatever syntax is chosen, it is applied strictly. if
it is to be a loglang, then
--
Ray
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