phonology

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>From: Cyril Slobin <slobin@FEAST.FE.MSK.RU>
>Subject:      Re: Phonology Paper Released
>
>> > Why does Lojban make [B] a variant of "v" rather than of "b"?
>> > Is this rule inherited from Loglan? I definitely don't like it.
>
>> I read somewhere that the russian cluster "KB" as in "MOCKBA" (sorry,
>> no cyrillic fonts :-) sounds [kB]. Perhaps JCB (or someone else) was
>> aware of this. (Perhaps also la kir. or someone else could tell us
>> if that cluster does indeed sound this way.)
>
>I haven't yet read phonology paper, and pronuncation always was my
>weakest side (you happy haven't _hear_ my english!  :-), but I belive
>lojban sounds are more or less close to correspondent russian (maybe
>expect ' ). But I can prove that MOCKBA sounds just mos,KVA - neither
>"mosqua" nor "moskba".  Cyrillic alphabet has _two_ letters derived from
>Greek "beta" - and those _looks_ like latin B _sounds_ like V.

I haven't read the new paper either (indeed, since Cowan posted from my
site, I didn't know the paper was out until I saw this message %^)

Here is what JCB had for Loglan phonology, from Loglan 2, Chapter 1:

Non-nasal, non-vocalic consonants are defined by features.  The
principle features are voiced/unvoiced and stop/continuant.  There is a
3rd access which can be defined as front/mid/back, but which he also
says can be defined as "grave diffuse (b/v/p/f)", "nongrave diffuse
(d/z/t/s)", "grave non-diffuse (g/k)" and "non-grave non-diffuse (j/c)"
(But "the ternary position feature more accurately conveys the symmetry
of these 12 phonemes as they are likely to be distinguished in Loglan").
Continuants are "strident" in Loglan; stops are "non-strident".  He is
ambivalent whether t/d will be alveolar or dental - both are permitted.

Aspiration is not phonemic, but may persist as quasi-phonemic in
dialects spoken by languages that associate Loglan phonemes with single
consonants in the native language that are significnatly distinguishe by
aspiration.

So this may or may not help.  If the [B] you are referring to is a
strident or continuent, it should be mapped as /v/; if it is a stop
and/or non-strident it should be mapped as /b/.  If it overlaps these
two categories or some of the others mentioned above, then it is not a
single Lojban phoneme at all, and will probably be mapped differently by
different speakers.

Since I don't know what [B] is, or what "strident" means, I make no
judgement, but I suspect that this is referring to a sound mapped by
Chuck Barton to /b/ specifically mentioning Spanish; Chuck is near
native fluency in Spanish and Russian, working as a
translator/interpreter and also teaching English as a Second Language.
His insights into phonology affected JCB's ideas in later years, and
were also significant to the Lojban design as we had access to Chuck
when we still had not gathered our archival knoledge of JCB's design.

lojbab