Re: brz reloaded!

Hallo!

R A Brown wrote:

> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> [what is a phoneme in brz?]
>
> >however, I understand "phonemes" to be the
> > basic building blocks of the morphemes, and of those there are 16.
>
> They are only the _written_ building blocks; there are certainly 16
> _graphemes_.
Yes.

>       But a different analysis of phonemes is quite clearly
> possible. I wonder how other phonologists on the list see it.
I agree.

> As it seems more than one possible phonological analysis is possible, it
> would perhaps be preferable to avoid the term 'phoneme' in the
> description of the language.
Yes.  After all, the *underlying* units of the structure of brz
are, as I understand it, the *bit patterns* (which, for example,
determine the lengths of the morphemes), and the 16 graphemes and
their pronunciations are merely mappings of those onto something
more human-friendly.

>       When Dirk outlined his ideas on the
> possible use of the Roman letters as a syllabary in May 1999, he talked
> in terms of syllables and not of phonemes:
> {quote}
> In my scheme, each consonant letter represents three different CV
> syllables, where each syllable has the same consonant but varies in the
> vowel quality. The vowel qualities are "resting" (central unrounded),
> rounded, and fronted.
>
> p [p|, pu, pi]  b [pa, po, pe] ("|" is "barred-i")
> t [t|, tu, ti]  d [ta, to, te]
> {/quote}
>
> brz does not have central vowels, only front & back, but a similar
> description could be used, methinks.
Yes.  That makes sense.

> [snip]
> >>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).
> >
> > Again, depends on the definition and analysis.
>
> It does, but "no vowel" phonologies always seem rather suspect to me.
Yes.  It does.  If someone was to describe a natlang as having no
vowel phonemes, I'd be deeply skeptical of that.  Natlangs have vowel
phonemes.  However, brz is neither a natlang nor a naturalist artlang.

> [letter assignments]
>
> >>>Roots are morphemes with at least five phonemes, i.e.,
> >>
> >>This surely is going against the concept of a _briefscript_.
> >
> >
> > True.  I'd indeed put the cutoff lower.  How many grammatical
> > affixes do we need?  Can we get along with 72?
>
> I would have thought that 72 was more than adequate. Jeff's idea was to
> reduce them to a minimum; I would wish to do the same.
Yes.  So, everything with three or more letters is a root.  There are
512 triliteral roots and 4096 quadrilitral ones.  Thus, most everyday
notions can be expressed with no more than four graphemes, and the
thousands of longer roots are only occasionally used for more
specialized vocabulary.  Most words would indeed be much shorter
in brz than in English or any other natlangs.

> >If yes, anything
> > with three or more phonemes can be a lexeme.
>
> Like in Piashi    :)
>
> > But for a briefscript, I'd start with more phonemes anyway.
> > 16 phonemes aren't many.  So the briefscript goal goes out of the
> > window as well,
>
> Why?
>
> Of course if brevity is the over-riding concern you want as many
> graphemes (not necessarily phonemes) as possible. A example of this is
> Srikanth's Lin which uses both upper & lower case letters as _separate_
> symbols together with digits and certain other non-alphanumeric symbols,
> which gives Lin some 70 or so graphemes.
>
> But more often than not there are other considerations as well. But
> merely because we are restricted to 16 graphemes do not IMO rule out an
> attempt to be as concise as possible.
True.  After all, we have a "phonotactics" that allows *any* sequence
of graphemes, while natlangs have many restrictions on which sequences
of phonemes can occur in the language.  And there are 4608 lexical
roots with no more than 4 letters, and another 32768 roots with five
letters.  That's a much shorter average word length than in most
natlangs, I'd say.  So indeed a briefscript.  (See the example below.)

>  >and because I don't really get what all that
> > loglang fuss is about,
>
> Surely it is to model a language according to some formal system of
> (mathematical) logic.
Yes.

> >brz is a ... what at all is it?
>
> That is precisely what I had asked a few mails ago  :-)
>
> But as it arose out of a paper titled: "Design and Implementation of a
> Near-optimal Loglan Syntax" it does seem reasonable to do just that:
> develop brz as a loglang. Besides, I have never attempted a loglang
> before - it might be rather fun!
I've also never attempted a loglang before.  Perhaps I'll do one
some day, and brz could be the start of it.  Actually, I have some
ideas for it already.  Someone going by the sobriquet "veritosproject"
proposed an interesting idea last week:

>> I came up with an idea where you assign endings to nouns, and then
>> build the sentence based on the endings.  For example,
>>  fox-ka dog-no; quick-ka brown-ka lazy-no; ka jump over-no
>> is
>>  the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
>> Is this too artificial?  How does it sound?
That brought me to an idea, namely to use a system of "variables"
rather than adjectives and such.  The sentence

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog."

would be expressed by something like

fox x; brown x; quick x; dog y; lazy y; jump.over x y;

In brz, using the roots _str_ `fox', _rlg_ `brown', _rdr_ `quick',
_stl_ `dog', _rkk_ `lazy', _krbp_ `jump over' and one-letter morphemes
as variables:

str j rlg j rdr j stl g rkk g krbp j g

or, as the morphology is self-segregating:

strjrlgjrdrjstlgrkkgkrbpjg

Indeed quite concise.  Yeah, that's fun!

> > Indeed, my interest in brz has pretty much collapsed in afterthought.
> > There really isn't much useful I can put it to.
>
> :-D  How much usefulness can the majority of conlangs be put to?
Not any real-world usefulness, that's true.  Old Albic, for example,
is merely a work of art, not a test for the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis",
nor an IAL, nor an interlingua for automatic translation, nor meant
for any other practical purpose.

> >The original design
> > goals, namely loglang, briefscript and philosophical language, are
> > all outcrops of the same meme complex according to which natural
> > human languages are flawed in one way or another, and ought to be
> > improved.
>
> No.
>
> My understanding of Loglan was _not_ that it was supposed to be
> improving any perceived 'flaws' in natural languages, but to produce a
> means of expression that would be _quite different_ to ordinary natlangs
> in order to test SW hypothesis. Whether the latter aim is practical or
> not is beside the point.
>
> The aim of a loglang, as I understand it, is not to fix 'flaws' in
> natlangs, but to explore _alternative_ modes of expression and
> communication. By doing this it can give us further insights into the
> way language and the human mind works.
Well, I have seen much stuff written on loglangs claiming that loglangs
were more efficient, more precise, less prone to misunderstandings and
sophistry, etc., than natlangs; however, this is all peripheral to the
basic idea of a loglang.  Just because some Whorfian-Korzybskian wackos
have jumped aboard the train doesn't mean that the train is heading
towards the wrong direction.

> As for briefscripts & philosophical languages, see comments below.
>
> > I think that's bummer.  Human languages are the way they
> > are because that's the way humans process languages,
>
> Yes - but *how* do we process languages? There are still many mysteries
> about the way the human mind works. Surely any possible vehicle of
> exploration is worthy of consideration?
True.

> >and loglangs,
> > briefscripts and philosophical languages run against that and are
> > thus impractical.
>
> WOAHH!! To say that briefscripts run against this and are impractical is
> just nonsense. A briefscript is a _script_ - that is, a written
> representation of language. Briefscripts have been around almost as long
> as writing. They were certainly known in the ancient world.
>
> Alphabetic briefscripts for English have been around for a long time.
> Many years ago this advertisement appeared:
>         If u cn rd ths ad, u cn gt a gd jb.
>
> It was an advertisement for a briefscript called 'Speedwriting'. As far
> as I know, it was practical, and it certainly did not go against the way
> humans process language. At the very moment I am writing, I suspect
> there are a few thousand people around the world sending text messages
> to one another in some form of briefscript.
Briefscripts are indeed useful where the lack of redundancy is not
much of a concern.

> Philosophical languages were, I agree, intended to fix 'flaws' in human
> languages and, indeed, aimed to provide a 'more perfect' language. Hence
> most (all?) of them were/are promoted as IALs. They have IMO proved
> impractical.
Yes.

>       But this IMO does not apply to loglangs, and certainly not
> to briefscripts.
True.  They are embraced by those who wish to "improve" language, but
that's actually peripheral to the original ideas.

> > Brz was a nice idea to play with, but I don't
> > think I can mould it into a conlang that appeals to me.  It is
> > theoretically elegant, but utterly unnatural (thus running against
> > my preference for naturalistic languages) and (to me) outright ugly.
>
> It obviously will not be a natlang. But ugliness is a subjective matter;
> I find Gaelic attractive, JRRT thought it ugly.
I too find Gaelic attractive.

>       In any case brz is
> hardly developed enough to know what it will look/ feel like.
At any rate, it doesn't appeal to my taste for naturalism.  But that
is a personal matter.  Well, the future transhumanist sect that
perhaps will speak it is *evil*; they are in effect Nazis with more
technology to put into their plan to create the Übermensch.  Their
language cannot be twisted, misguided and hideous enough!

Greetings,

Jörg.

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