Re: brz reloaded!

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>>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 am very aware of the problems that infest philosophical language,
> and I'd never seriously propose a philosophical language as an IAL
> or anything else.  Though ot would be fun to play with one.  I once
> had the idea of inventing a *fictional* philosophical language that
> I could, for example, contribute to Ill Bethisad;
Why not   :)

[snip]
>>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   ;)
>
>
> Depends on your definition of "phoneme".
"The _minimal_ unit in the sound system of a language, according to
traditional phonological theories." [Crystal - my emphasis of 'minimal']

>There are definitely
> seven or eight (depending on whether one counts the zero onset)
> consonant *phones*;
You must, surely, include the vowels among the phones. Arguably, in
fact, your analysis is back-to-front. Surely |k| and |g|, for example,
represent two _allophones_ of the same phoneme /k/, one being slightly
palatalized & the other slightly velarized?

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

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. 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.

[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.

[snip]

>>I note my use of traditional voiced & voiceless obstruent symbols have
>>been switched over. Any particular reason?
>
>
> Yes.  Voiceless consonants sound "sharper" than their voiced
> counterparts (in languages where coda consonants transmogrify into
> tones, voiceless consonants give high tone, and voiced consonants
> yield low tone), so I found it more appropriate to assign the
> "voiceless" letters to the front and the "voiced" letters to the
> back vowels.
Fair enough.

[snip]
>>>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.
>
>
> I really do not want to introduced capital letters with different
> values than their lower-case counterparts.  We should not tread
> the Path of the Warrior.
Indeed not! My use of |M| and |N| were *concessions to those who are
restricted to 7-bit ASCII* in the same sort of way that CXS and X-SAMPA
are such concessions.

My proposal in fact was to use the _lower case_ letters |µ| and |ɴ|
(Greek mu & the IPA symbol for the uvular nasal, U+0274). I had thought
of the Greek nu, but its lowercase form is too easily confused with |v|.
I suppose if |ɴ| is really disliked, one could use Cyrillic |н| (U+043D).

Other ideas?

>
>>>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?
>
>
> I use |n| for [n] followed by a back vowel, so I use |m| for [m]
> followed by a back viwel, too.  And |µ| has the association of
> a palatalized /m/ to me, though I don't know why.  Perhaps
> because its name is often prnounced [mju:] in English in an
> attempt to say [my:]
No - the English name goes back to the quaint "traditional" method of
pronouncing ancient Greek in Britain (and possibly elsewhere) which
still held sway until well into the early part of the 20th century. it
was mentally transliterated into Roman letters, Y (upsilon) always being
|u|, and then pronounced as though it were 'English'.

Those that use a 'restored' pronunciation do in fact say [my:] when
pronouncing the letter the Greek way (tho in many ancient dialects,
especially Doric, it was [mu:]). Those who, like me, normally use the
modern Greek values, it is [mi].

> (wherein the /m/ is followed by a front vowel).
I guess this will depend to some extent on what symbols are chose for
[nu, nO] and [ni, nE] respectively.

[snip]
>>>
>>>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.

>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.

 >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.

>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!

>
> 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?

>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.

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?

>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.

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. But this IMO does not apply to loglangs, and certainly not
to briefscripts.

> 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. In any case brz is
hardly developed enough to know what it will look/ feel like.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

Replies