How Many Syllables, part II

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

(This will not make sense unless you have read my previous "How Many Syllables")

Of course, there are lots more syllable types that appear only in le'avla
and cmene.  lojbab and I thought of "VCC", "CVCC", "CCVCC", "VVCC", "CVVCC",
"CCVCC", "CCR", "IVC", "CIVC", "CCIVC", "IVCC", "CIVCC", "CCIVCC", "CCCV",
"CCCVC", "CCCVV", "CCCVVC", and there undoubtedly are others.  ("I" represents
"i" or "u" as glides.

In general, the whole phonotactics of names and borrowings is undefined.
Are final clusters allowed in names?  Clearly:  ".and." is a good example.
But >which< final clusters?  Nobody knows.  Furthermore, there is the
"close-comma", notated ",", which specifies an undefined glide between
vowels, and which can lead to real problems:  how can you tell the
differences between "ai,ia", "a,ia", and "ai,a"?

Still, the list of syllables for cmavo, gismu, and lujvo is probably
complete, and it's useful to see that the core of the language, excluding
stuff grabbed from other languages, is essentially very small in syllabic
terms (for comparison, English has tens of thousands of syllables).

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