Re: brz reloaded!

On 9/29/05, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:> It seems to
me that apart from on add short interjection here and there,
> it is overwhelmingly Jörg and me corresponding on this thread. Maybe, at
> this stage it could be brought to an end on the list. Then Jörg and I
> can take the 'brz basis' and develop it each in our own and in our own
> time and see how it goes. It is obvious we have some different ideas; it
> will be interesting to see how they develop. Maybe a report back after
> the New Year   :)
>
> --
> Ray
Oh, I had been following with interest; I had simply been too busy to
participate. Here is what I had been thinking the whole time:

(1) Instead of borrowing the Plan B self-segmentation, which I find a
little unwieldy -- neat, but inhuman -- use your vowel-deduction
system!  After all, that is the interesting part of this language.  If
you were, say, to eliminate one of the vowels, you wouldn't need any
further system.  So we take a vowel system i,a,u; if two consecutive
consonants don't give us one of these, it's a word boundary.  (Jörg
may also find interesting the resulting CVCVCVC structure of words,
which will allow additional segmentation fun.)

This leverages the cool part of the language for another use, and lets
you begin words with any consonant you want.

(2) Have the vowel quality of the... letter? phoneme?... er... what
are these bit sequences called?  Anyway.  Have the vowel quality
influence the consonant, and not just be used in vowel deduction:
palatalize it, shift its POA, etc.  Something like:

There are two vowel/secondary consonant articulation featurebits,
[LAB] and [PAL].  [+LAB,-PAL] gives us /u/, [-LAB,+PAL] gives us /i/,
[-LAB,-PAL] gives us /a/, and [+LAB,+PAL] is stipulated not to exist
and thus marks a word boundary.

There are two basic points of articulation, maybe given by a bit
[COR].  (I'm just calling it that, and not implying that everything
with COR is coronal and everything without it is not.)  /t/ is [+COR],
/k/ is [-COR].  But we get more POAs through the LAB/PAL featurebits.
[+COR,+PAL] gives us alveopalatals, [-COR,+PAL] gives us a palatal k
(as in "key").  Oh, and [-COR,+LAB] gives us /p/, (maybe < */k_w/).

Or something like that; you get the idea.  Something along the lines
of the Gaelic broad/narrow distinction, taken one step further.

(3) If a three-vowel system isn't enough, each /a/ can anticipate the
vowel of the next syllable, giving us /e/ (< */ai/) and /o/ (< */au/).
 Or, it could give us /ai/ and /au/, and the /i/ and /u/ could
anticipate an /a/ to give us the /e/ and /o/.

Anyway, that's my two cents,

-- Pat

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