Re: TECH: Pitch Accent

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

>Nick Nicholas has proposed to me that high pitch (a la Japanese or
>Serbo-Croatian) should be tolerated in Lojban as an alternative to primary
>stress.  Nora points out that there's no a priori reason why it should be
>high rather than low pitch that means "accented".  Comments?

I can't hear stress if it's marked only with pitch.  You'd think it would be
easy to hear, but at least in my experience it's not.  I don't think the two
systems of stress are compatible, regardless of the choice of high or low.
If you want to use Japanese-style stress as an alternate standard, I would
think high would at least be superficially more consistent with the existing
standard.

Is it easier for pitch-stress-language speakers to learn English-style
stress than vice versa?  I'd guess it would be but I don't know.