Allophones of zero in Lojban

["Mark E. Shoulson" <cbmvax!uunet!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!shoulson>]

I don't know.  On the one hand, the "y" and the buffer vowel (and for that
matter, laxly-pronounced "a"'s) are just too likely to get confused.  And,
as And said, "y" is a very reasonable choice for a buffer vowel.  On the
other hand, I can't come up with a pretty way to do away with the function
of "y" in morphology (cf. my "bastrapli/bastyrapli" example).  Personally,
if it weren't such a big change in the way things are done and such a
hassle on phoneticization of cmene and the like, I'd almost rather see
keeping everything as it stands, but allowing (mandating?) schwa as buffer
vowel and changing the pronunciation of "y" to "\"u" (u-umlaut).  Yeah,
it's kind of Volap"ukian, but it's certainly recognizable as different from
everything else, feels like a good "hyphen" sound to me, and even makes
decent hesitation noise (try it!).

~mark  (shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu)