WikiDiscuss

---

> The iy and uy sequences have *always* been restricted to use in cmene,
> because cmene are a wastebasket category that can't threaten the morphology:
> the only reason to restrict things in cmene is to preserve audio-visual
> isomorphism. Other than that, they are reserved for something so important
> and overriding that we absolutely need them. Using iy as fu'ivla-rafsi glue
> falls in that category, but allowing them in random user-constructed
> fu'ivla definitely does not. As for cmavo, we have more than enough long
> cmavo capability without any need to allow iy and uy there.

I agree "y" should not be allowed in fu'ivla other than as a hyphen
for rafsi. I don't see how allowing anything in cmavo is more or
less threatening to audio-visual isomorphism than allowing them in
cmene, especially since new cmavo will be extremely rare anyway,
whereas new cmene crop up all the time.

> It's my considered opinion that vowel glides beyond the standard diphthongs
> shouldn't exist in Lojban at all, for the same reason that the forbidden
> consonant clusters are forbidden: glides too threaten audio-visual
> isomorphism.

That's how the PEG is set to work now:

a can never be followed by a, e, o or y
e can never followed by a, e, o, u or y
o can never followed by a, e, o, u or y
y can never followed by a, e, i, o, or u

Those restrictions are absolute, no matter if there are
intervening commas. (An intervening apostrophe allows
any pair, the vowels are not adjacent then.)

In gismu: Only a, e, i, o, u. No vowel can be followed by another vowel.
In lujvo: ai, au, ei, oi are the only pairs allowed. y allowed as hyphen.
In fu'ivla: (i/u)(a/e/i/o/u) are added. Possibly iy as hyphen in lujvo.
In cmene and lujvo: iy, uy and yy are added.

fu'ivla, cmene and lujvo allow longer strings of vowels as
long as each adjacent pair is allowed.

> It's very hard to reliably distinguish between {u,au} and {u,uau}, or between
> {ua,u} and {ua,uu}. In fact, uu and ii are only tolerable IMHO because they
> are always preceded by ".".

It would be relatively easy to forbid vowel triples everywhere. We just
add "!(vowel-y vowel-y)" at the end of the vowel rules.

> It's time to tighten up. Sixteen diphthongs only, and of those, "iy" and
> "uy"
> in cmene only, unless we can prove that "iy" is really fully usable for
> fu'ivla-rafsi. The few corpus words that conflict with this should be
> replaced one way or another.

I don't see any reason to make cmene different from cmavo as far
as vowels are concerned. If it's pronounceable in Lojban, it can
be allowed in both places without any ambiguity. If it's not
pronounceable in Lojban, then obviously it is not pronounceable
anywhere. Arbitrarily restricting one but not the other in the
absence of ambiguity doesn't seem right.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

__
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com