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-gua!spi (was: Incredible!)



la kris. cusku di'e

> Guaspi does something similar -- its gismu are monosyllabic but can have 
> several consonants at the beginning and end; also it counts some liquids and 
> things as vowels, I think.  The use of tones for syntax probably allows some 
> overlap between cmavo and gismu -- not sure about that though.

In -gua!spi, cmavo are C followed by any number of Vs, and gismu are two or
more Cs followed by any number of Vs, where (this is the important bit)
V includes l, m, n, r.  So words needn't be monosyllabic -- "kira" is
a word, or potential word -- but are in some sinse "monoochunked".
Word separation is easy: all word boundaries are of the form V#C, where
# is the boundary.  The rule that cmavo begin with just one C is purely
conventional: nothing in the language depends on it.

There really is no upper limit to either cmavo or gismu in -gua!spi:
"gznoerailmanliemournaaaeiiiilllr" is a potential gismu, and you can throw
in as many schwas as you like to pronounce it.

-- 
John Cowan					cowan@ccil.org
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.