Re: Tunu not dead

Larry wrote:

<<<
Many Spanish speakers have a hard time distinguishing [tS] from [S] in
their speech.
>>>
I did not notice. But my wife pronounces /y/ and /ll/ as [Z] or [dZ].

<<<
Now, if self-segregation were not important in Tunu (or
Konya), then yes, a collection of monosyllabic roots would be better
than not having them.
>>>
Diversion: Many loglangs reserve monosyllabics to express concepts that have a
specific grammar value: usually the tenses, aspects, plural, feminine,
evidentials, etc., because the langmakers think that "these concepts are going
to be used more often" and "these other ones are logically more important."

I prefer a different approach. First, the concepts I tag more often or find
important are not such for other people. Whether plural, tense, classifiers,
evidentials, etc are considered trivial in other languages and vice versa
depends on languages. My feeling when collecting as many "important" concepts
as possible is getting a list of random concepts that is incomplete forsome and
useless for others.

Second, I want to use even these concepts as plain roots. Indonesian makes with
ada "there" the verb mengadakan "to make exist, make happen, organize" and with
sebab "cause, because" menyebabkan "to cause", instead of using abstract tags
that are redundant with the roots "exist" and "cause".

That's why I make all concepts and roots the same: they all have the same
potential importance and it is not for me to dictate my imaginary speaker which
is to use more often. I know that the word "and" may be linked to slightly
different concepts: accompany, succession, join, gather, etc. so I prefer to
leave the imaginary speaker select the root.

<<<
Also, in a limited phoneme set, having a lot of very short words may
reduce redundancy, depending on what roles they play and how they are
implemented.
---larry
>>>
I agree. What roles they play is the langmaker's decision and how (and whether)
they are implemented I leave it to the speaker's decision.
µ.