How Many Syllables In Lojban?

[John Cowan <cbmvax!UUNET.UU.NET!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

An email conversation with Mark Mandel of Dragon Systems about the possibility
of computer speech recognition of Lojban sent me off on the question "How
many syllables does Lojban have?"  If the number is small enough, current
techniques might be able to resolve each Lojban syllable in connected speech,
using the morphology and grammar rules to correct errors.  (Resolving each
phoneme is, Mark assures me, too difficult.)  Herewith the results of my
investigations.

Conventions:  For the purpose of this document, VV only to the four regular
Lojban diphthongs ai, ei, oi, au.  V refers only to the main vowels
a, e, i, o, u.  CC refers to the 48 permissible initial consonant clusters,
and C to the 17 consonants.  R refers to syllabic r, l, or n.  Other characters
stand for themselves.  "Sample" gives a syllable of the specified type;
"Word" is a word in which the sample syllable appears.

Lojban syllabication rules:  CC attaches to the following syllable, but pairs
of C's are otherwise split.  Three consonants are split with the first attaching
to the preceding syllable and the last two (which are always a CC) to the
following syllable.

Syllable types used in cmavo, gismu, and lujvo:

Type    Sample  Word            Factors                 Syllables

CV      di      bridi           17 x 5                  85
Cy      ky      dikyjvo         17                      17
CCV     bri     bridi           48 x 5                  240
CCVV    grai    xagrai          48 x 4                  192
CVC     gug     gugde           17 x 5 x 17             1445
CCVC    ckel    mickelcre       48 x 5 x 17             4080
.V      .e      .e              5                       5
.VV     .ai     .ai             4                       4
.iV     .ia     .ia             5                       5
.uV     .ui     .ui             5                       5
.y.     .y.     .y.             1                       1
'V      'i      la'i            5                       5
'VC     'ir     po'irpoi        5 x 17                  85

Total: 6169 syllables.

The following syllable types occur only in le'avla (borrowings) and names:

CVVC    raig    raigbu          17 x 4 x 17             1156
CCVVC   kreig   kreig.          48 x 4 x 17             3264
'VV     'ai     ta'aino         4                       4
'VVC    'ais    ni'ais.         4 x 17                  68
CR      dr      gugdrnede       17 x 3                  41
iy      (reserved)              1                       1
uy      (reserved)              1                       1

Grand total: 10704 syllables.

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban