Re: Two questions about Esperanto

On Friday, July 9, 2004, at 06:04 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:

[snip]
> On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 08:53:23PM +0100, Ray Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> But syllabic |r| is not a consonant.
>
> What does syllabicity have to do with a phone being consonantal or
> not?  In most phonological features systems of which I am aware,
> [+- consonantal] (or to put it differently, [+- vocalic]) and
> [+- syllabic] are two separate features.
OK - my sentence was badly phrased. By 'consonant' I was meaning a sound
which functions at the margins of syllables not at its nucleus. The
approximants, of course can function both at the margins and in the
nucleus of a syllable. I could've said 'obstruents' & excluded the
approximants; but that would not be satisfactory either since if the
circumflex were used, e.g. to denote a variant of the approximant which
functioned at the margins of a syllable, it should be counted.

>> If a language uses the circumflex in
>> something like its original use, i.e. to denote high pitch falling to low
>> pitch on the same vowel, and it has /r/ as syllable nucleus, then of
>> course we'd expect the circumflex to fall on |r| sometimes. But I was
>> talking about true consonants. AFAIK Esperanto is the only language that
>> pits circumflexes on true consonants.
Yep - "true consonant" is not the correct term, I know.

Perhaps, in view of various misunderstandings, I need to define myself
more precisely:
"AFAIK no natural language uses the circumflex, as Esperanto does, on
letters that denote sounds at the syllable margins in order to show
modification of the syllable margin sound."

> Can't think of a really clear example off the top of my head, but
> I know that in his discussion about Hurrian-Urartian and its putative
> relationship to North-East Caucasian, I. Diakonoff uses circumflexes
> on <s> to signify a lateral fricative (truly one of the worst
> transcription
> systems ever!).  Since Hurrian used cuneiform, and Urartian used either
> cuneiform or an abjad, and none of the NE-Cauc. languages uses the Latin
> alphabet, I'm not sure this counts.
It doesn't  :)

What an individual scholar may or not choose to do in a transcription,
especially of an ancient language, is more akin to conlanging. I mean the
conventional script of a natural language.
==============================================================
On Thursday, July 8, 2004, at 08:42 , Mark J. Reed wrote:
[snip]

> Whether or not the sound represented is actually a "true" consonant is
> irrelevant to the necessity for (or availability of) the glyph, which is
> what I thought we were talking about.
No - see above. In any case, it wouldn't make much sense, as I see it, to
discus the availability. Surely the circumflex was available even before
Zamenhof chose to use it?

Indeed, I had always understood that Zamenhof chose the circumflex for the
precise reason that it was far more _readily available_ than the caron was
(at least in 1887).

> So I was just pointing out that there
> are langauges that use the circumflex accent over letters that are
> traditionally used for consonant sounds.  That's all. :)
But have you? When I searched for r^ and the only occurrences I could find
were in its use as a mathematical symbol.
========================================================
On Thursday, July 8, 2004, at 08:38 , Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Jul 8, 2004, at 3:25 PM, Ray Brown wrote:
> [snip]
>>  AFAIK Esperanto is the only language
>> that puts circumflexes on true consonants.
>
> (cough)(cough)Rokbeigalmki(cough)(cough)...
But conlangs can - and many do - do all sorts of things not found in
natlangs. I know some of my youthful Esperantidoj of 50 years or so ago
used circumflexes on obstruents.

Again, my sentence was badly expressed. I intended to compare E-o with
natlangs (see above)

========================================================
On Thursday, July 8, 2004, at 09:13 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

> RB> This is stranger & stranger. The Fundamento (which I've known some
> RB> Esperanto fundamentalists treat as tho it were holy writ) actually
> allows
> RB> what is potentially ambiguous, but this is not liked by many
> Esperantists!
> RB> "Curiouser & curiouser" as Alice said.
>
> Well, I'd be surprised if we had any Esperanto "fundamentalists"
> (Fundamento-lists?) here - who among such could stand us?  ;)
I'd be equally surprised for much te same reason. But they do venture into
Auxland (or used to when I was there  :)

[snip]
> RB> Indeed - or even use |s| = /s/ and |x| = /S/.
>
> RB> It vaguely amuses me that Esperanto dispensed with |q|, |w|, |y| and
> |x|,
> RB> bringing the total number of letters to 22, then adds 5 accented
> RB> consonants and one accented vowel to bring the number up to 28.
>
> Okay, let's see.  Replace <ux> with <w>, <sx> with <x>.  Remap /j/ to
> <y> and use <j> for /Z/ (replacing <jx>).
[snip]

Yes, various Esperantidoj (there must be dozens upon dozens of them),
including Ido itself, do just such things. I've amused myself with my own
reforms at odd times in the past. Most of us on this list could, I guess,
come up with our schemes.

But it's a bit like the English & French spelling reform threads that
occur on this list every so often - it ain't goint to happen.

> IIRC, the _Fundamento_ allows use of <w> in lieu of <ǔ>; in fact, I
> don't think it recognizes <uh>, reserving the -h digraphs for the
> consonants.
It certainly doesn't recognize |uh|. The -h convention is for the
circumflexed consonants only in circumstances, e.g. telegrams, where the
circumflex is not available.  My recollection is that just plain |u| is
permitted, instead of u-breve, in similar circumstances - but I may be
mistaken.

> (Those of us who use -x do use <ux>, however).
I know  :=(

> But I would
> guess that it's not <w> in the primary orthography in order to avoid
> confusing those whose native language has <w>=/v/, as in Zamenhof's
> native Polish.  In fact, in the languages which have <w> in use for
> native words, doesn't it represent /v/ more often than it does /w/?
In Zamenhof's time, maybe - I don't know how many African languages had
official, standard spelling systems at the end of the 19th century. But
today I do not think it's true.

> That's just my guess, though.  And it's admittedly a weak argument, since
> *some* element of Esperanto's orthography is going to be different from
> *everyone's* native one . . .
Exactly.
==========================================================
On Thursday, July 8, 2004, at 09:14 , John Cowan wrote:

> Ray Brown scripsit:
>
>> Dunno - haven't a clue what you're getting at here by suggesting some of
>> us aren't adults.
>
> I think he means the human race as a whole.
Does he? That makes the statement even less meaningful IMO.

[snip]
>> But, er, why, if Esperanto felt it necessary to have a letter to denote
>> /w/
>> , didn't it just use |w|? Just puzzled.
>
> Probably the pressure of German and Polish orthography.  Using u, and
> marking it with a diacritic, bypassed that right away.  In fact, when
> you get past English and Welsh (and writing systems founded on English,
> like IPA and Romanized Chinese), I can hardly think of any writing system
> that uses "w" for /w/.
What about Breton?

In any case, isn't this being a tad eurocentric?

All the African orthographies I've come across use |w| to denote /w/. OK -
you're say they're English based.  But is this really true.  I know of
none that base the use of vowels on english practice.

But Esperanto's phonology & orthography have surely both been analyzed &
argued over more than enough in the past 117 years - the arguments are
well rehearsed & can readily be found on the Internet.

I did suggest a day or so back that we might end this thread. I doubt
whether we will add anything significantly new.

Ray
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