Hallo!

On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 15:23:43 +0100, R A Brown wrote:

> And Rosta wrote:
> > Joerg & Ray concur that Plan B does not have 16 phonemes with 
> > consonantal and vocalic allophones:
> [snip]
> >
> > To my eyes, the most sensible analysis of Plan B is the 16-phoneme 
> > dual-allophony one. It's the analysis you get if you apply basic 
> > principles of contrastiveness; 
> 
> In the words John McEnroe (with similar intonation & gestures): "You can 
> not be serious!"

I hope you didn't smash your racket - those things are expensive :)
 
> >and the alternatives that Joerg & Ray put 
> > forward fail to account for the systematic equivalence of consonants and 
> > vowel phonemes.
> 
> What???
> 
> Plan B has strings of CV, which is not exactly uncommon. The Polynesian 
> languages do this all the time. I could easily write Hawaiian, Samoan or 
> any of the others, using only consonant symbols. All we need to know is 
> how these symbols are pronounced in the odd numbered positions (i.e. 
> when used to denote vowels).

Yes, such a writing is possible, though it is quite insane.  But that
says nothing about the phonemic structure of the languages concerned.

> OK - Plan B is a little different in that:
> - the last item in a string can be a C, i.e. the final syllable may be 
> CVC. But I bet there are examples of natlangs that have the same feature.

There almost certainly are, even I cannot name one.

> - the number of consonant phonemes and vowel phonemes (if, as you 
> obviously are, you count the r+V as separate phones) is the same.
> 
> Let us suppose we have a natlang with only six consonant phonemes:
> 	    Bilabial Alveolar 	Velar
> Voiceless 	p 	t 	k
> Voiced 	v 	r 	g
> 
> Such a language, we know, does exist. It's called Rotakas. The voiceless 
> consonants are plosives, the voiced may be realized as voiced fricatives 
> or nasals according to dialect (the 'voiced alveolar' is often realized 
> as a lateral or flap).
> 
> Suppose our language has the classical five vowels (as Rotakas in fact 
> has), but also includes an unrounded high central vowel, CXS /1/ (IPA 
> /ɨ/). We could represent our language, let us call it 'Rotakas B', quite 
> unambiguously with just six symbols, namely:
>     Consonant    Vowel
> P    /p/        /a/
> T    /t/        /e/
> K    /k/        /i/
> B    /v/        /o/
> R    /r/        /u/
> G    /g/        /ɨ/
> 
> Thus, e.g. BRT KGRP PGGTT = /vut igup agɨte/
> 
> Does that mean, then, that 'Rotakas B' has only six phonemes with 
> dual-allophony?

Nope.  It certainly has *twelve* phonemes - six consonants and
six vowels.

> I submit that:
> a. Any field worker who gave 'Rotakas B' such an orthography would be 
> considered a tad weird.
> b. Any phonologist that posited a six phoneme inventory for the 
> language, with each phoneme having a consonantal and a vocalic allophone 
> would be laughed out of court.

AMEN.

> Therefore, I say: "You can not be serious!"

And rightly so.

> -----------------------------------
> 
> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> [snip]
>  > .............  *Underlyingly*, a Plan B
>  > utterance is a *stream of bits* which is segmented into 4-bit units, 
> and it is
>  > these *bit patterns* that are the fundamental building blocks of the 
> language.
>  >
>  > The consonants and vowels are as secondary to the language as are the 
> letters
>  > we use to write English secondary to the English language.
> 
> Yes, this is true, but if are talking about its *phonology* then we 
> must, surely, deal with the consonants and vowels. At a phonological 
> level, the underlying bit-stream is IMO irrelevant.

Yes.  Phonemes do not consist of bits, even if they are encoded
that way!

> 'Rotakas B' can readily be expressed as a stream of bits in a similar 
> manner to plan B. True, 'Rotakas B' would use only six out of the eight 
> possible three-bit patters. But let us suppose our eccentric 
> field-worker moves on and finds a possibly (tho not not necessarily) 
> related group of indigenous people who have a language with eight 
> vowels, similar to the Turkish inventory. We now have /i e y ø ɨ a u o/.
> He finds this language, which we may call 'Rotakas C' also has eight 
> consonant phonemes; besides the six of 'Rotakas B' it also has a 
> voiceless and voiced pair of palatals, thus:
> 	    Bilabial Alveolar 	Palatal	Velar
> Voiceless 	p 	t 	  c	k
> Voiced 	v 	r 	  j	g

So far, a perfectly plausible naturalistic language.

> Our eccentric field worker notices that he could use octal numbers in 
> order to encode the language, but decides not to. However he cannot 
> resist giving the eight bit patterns thus:
> BITS    WRITTEN  CONS.  VOWEL
> 000        P      /p/    /a/
> 001        T      /t/    /e/
> 010        C      /c/    /i/
> 011        K      /k/    /o/
> 100        V      /v/    /u/  [Now ain't that a coincidence!]
> 101        R      /r/    /ɨ/
> 110        J      /j/    /ø/
> 111        G      /g/    /y/
> 
> So we could have: TJRGV RCPT GKKVG /tøryv ɨcat ykovy/

Which is a totally insane way to spell it!
 
> Does the fact that the eight written consonant symbols of 'Rotakas C' 
> can each be individually mapped to a unique three-bit stream make the 
> slightest difference to way we examine the phonology? IMHO it makes not 
> an iota of difference.
> 
> I submit once again that a field worker who gave such an orthography to 
> 'Rotakas C' would be thought a tad weird, and that any phonologist who 
> posited eight phonemes, each with a consonantal & vocalic allophone, 
> would be laughed out of court.

I whole-heartedly agree.  What the field worker has produced is a
*binary encoding* that makes clever use of the phonology to save
one bit on each phoneme - but it is still a language with *sixteen*
phonemes, namely eight consonants and eight vowels.

>  > Yet, I wouldn't
>  > call the bit patterns "phonemes" because they are not domains in the 
> human
>  > phonetic space.
> 
> Nor would I call the bit patterns "phonemes"; more significantly, 
> perhaps, *Jeff Prothero, the author of Plan B, does _not_ call them 
> phonemes*.

True.  I concur with you.  The bit patterns are not phonemes.

> Let me quote the relevant parts of his description of the language:
> {quote 1}
> The proposed syntax consists of:
> * An alphabet.  "bcdf ghjk lmnp stvz" is suggested, but the
>    choice is not critical.
> * A pronunciation scheme which makes all sequences of
>    letters equally pronounceable, thus decoupling the rest
>    of the language design from the details of the human
>    vocal tract.
> {/quote 1}

Which is formulated as if the letters are more fundamental than
the spoken sounds, which is exactly the other way than in written
natlangs.  Nevertheless, the 16 letters Plan B is written with
aren't phonemes, just the same as the 26 letters English is written
with aren't phonemes (many beginning conlangers fail at this point).
Plan B has 16 *graphemes*, not 16 phonemes.

> {quote 2}
> (It is
> handy to have the alphabet size be a power of two.
> Eight letters would be less concise, thirty-two would
> be tough to map onto the standard twenty-six char
> character set. To encode an arbitrary
> bitstream efficiently, we use these sixteen letters
> as a hex encoding according to the following scheme.
> (The capital letters in the right two columns
> give the intended pronunciation of each letter
> when used as a vowel and when used as a consonant.)
> {/quote 2}

So, unlike what I tacitly assumed (and did actually do in X-1),
the letters are more fundamental than the bit stream.

> {quote 3}
> the particular letters and pronunciations
> chosen don't matter much, and might be changed
> for a non-European audience.
> {/quote 3}
> 
> IMO the last ought to changed to "a non-North-America audience." it is 
> quite clear that Jeff considers the vowels of _fought_ and _prop_ to be 
> the same, which they ain't in Britain nor AFAIK elsewhere in the 
> anglophone world outside of North America. But that is a small point; 
> the point is *the particular letters and pronunciations chosen don't 
> matter much.* This, basically, is what quote 1 also says.

Yes.

> In quote 2 it is quite clear that Jeff is using "sixteen letters
> as a hex encoding" (which is why I have written more than once that IMO 
> it might have been better simply to use the standard hex digits). 
> Further, Jeff writes: "the right two columns give the intended 
> pronunciation of each letter _when used as a vowel_ and _when used as a 
> consonant_" [emphasis mine].
> 
> There is mention here or, indeed, any where else in Jeff's article about 
> phonemes. Surely by writing "when used as a vowel" and "when used as a 
> consonant" he means that each hex letter has _two different uses_. To my 
> simple mind, that surely implies used as two different phonemes.

Yes.  Two different phonemes represented by the same grapheme,
as in your "Rotokas B" and "Rotokas C" examples.

> So at this stage I submit:
> - that any phonologist that gave 'Rotakas C' just eight phonemes, each 
> with a vocalic and unrelated consonantal allophone, would be laughed out 
> of court,
> - there is nothing in Jeff Prothero's article that states that Plan B 
> has just 16 phonemes, each with a vocalic and unrelated consonantal 
> allophone.

I agree in both points.

> So where does the notion that Plan B has 16 phonemes come from? To the 
> best of my knowledge it is due to Jacques Guy's satirical 'Plan C' in 
> which he wrote:
> {quote}
> The Plan-B language -- I'll call it Bee for short -- Bee, then, has 16
> er... phonemes, because sixteen is a power of two, which makes it
> computationally desirable. Each phoneme has two allophones, one of
> which is a vowel, or a diphthong, or the same preceded by "r", the
> other a consonant. I say: jolly good idea!  Indeed, it's like the
> author says: "By providing both a vowel and a consonant pronunciation
> for each letter, and using them alternately, we can pronounce
> arbitrary strings of letters without difficulty". Brilliant. And I,
> poor sod, who thought a strict CV(V) language would do it!
> {/quote}
> 
> "The Plan-B language has 16 er... phonemes" - Why "er..."? Because 
> surely Jacques Guy knows quote well that they are not phonemes. His 
> "jolly good idea!" and "brilliant" are surely sarcastic. Indeed, he 
> makes it clear earlier in his article that he 'taking the mickey' out of 
> Plan-B.
> 
> Sarcastic too, is his "And I, poor sod, who thought a strict CV(V) 
> language would do it!"

Absolutely.  Jacques Guy pulled a joke from the baroque dual-value
spelling system of Plan B, nothing else!  But And did not notice
the humour and based his analysis on it :)

> Of course a strict CV language would achieve the same result, i.e. 
> allowing a bitstream to be mapped to a sequence of consonant + vowel. 
> Jeff Prothero could easily have given his 16 bit patters a simple 
> syllabic value. Yes, a language with only 16 CV syllables is a bit low 
> on vowels and consonants. But in my email of Monday, 19th Sept. 2005, i 
> showed have the 16 bits could easily be mapped to a system of 24 
> syllables; in my page 
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Loglang/PhonAndOrthog.html
> I give an alternative system.

Yes.  See also http://wiki.frath.net/X-1 for a similar system
(both system fell out of the same discussion, so the similarity
is not coincidential).  (I have just reformulated the phonology
section a bit.  It was speaking of "16 literals ('phonemes')",
but the 16 literals are of course not phonemes.  X-1 has 11 phonemes,
namely the 7 consonants /p t k s m n l/ and the 4 vowels /i E O u/.)

> However, Jeff's main concern is that the inventory symbols be a power of 
> 2. A syllabary of 32 CV syllables is reasonable, and one of 64 even better.
> 
> But, some will say, bit patterns of 5 or 6 bits are (excuse the pun) a 
> bit untidy. Jeff's 4-bit patters are exactly half a byte (or 1 
> 'nibble'); this is neat as we have exactly two symbols per byte. OK 
> then, we'll have syllabary of 256 CV syllables - this will give us a 
> much richer inventory of consonants and vowels; it could also meet 
> Jeff's concern that "thirty-two would be tough to map onto the standard 
> twenty-six char character set."
> 
> How so, you ask? If 32 is too many, surely 256 is way over the top! But 
> consider De Kolovrat's system of mapping the 100 decimal numerals from 
> 00 through to 99 into pronounceable CV syllables. One could fairly 
> easily create a similar system for mapping the hex values 00 through to 
> FF into pronounceable CV syllables; this even byte value would map into 
> a unique CV syllable.
>
> There are all sorts of possibilities, indeed, whereby a bit-stream could 
> be mapped in CV syllables.

Yes.

> [snip]
>  >
>  > So, how to analyse Plan B correctly?  In the analysis of the spoken
>  > representation you get 16 syllable-initial consonants, 8 vowels and
>  > diphthongs, and another consonant /r/ that may or may not be inserted
>  > between the syllable-initial consonant and the vowel.  Ray and I said 
> that
>  > the 16 vowels and r/vowel combos are not allophones of the 16 consonants
>  > because they are completely different sounds.  You say they are.
> 
> AMEN!
> 
> I repeat: In 'Rotakas C' we have:
> BITS    WRITTEN  CONS.  VOWEL
> 000        P      [p]    [a]
> 001        T      [t]    [e]
> 010        C      [c]    [i]
> 011        K      [k]    [o]
> 100        V      [v]    [u]
> 101        R      [r]    [ɨ]
> 110        J      [j]    [ø]
> 111        G      [g]    [y]
> 
> So we could have: TJRGV RCPT GKKVG [tøryv ɨcat ykovy]
> 
> And says that "the alternatives that Joerg & Ray put forward fail to 
> account for the systematic equivalence of consonants and vowel 
> phonemes." In what possible way has 'Rotakas C' any less "systematic 
> equivalence of consonants and vowel phonemes" than Plan B?

In no way.  The consonant-vowel pairings in "Rotokas C" are
entirely arbitrary - as are those in Plan B!  One could easily pair
them differently.

> Must 'Rotakas C' then be analyzed as having eight phonemes, each with a 
> consonant and vowel allophones?

Certainly not!

>       Indeed, you're own statement "systematic 
> equivalence of consonants and vowel phonemes" surely implies that there 
> are vowel and consonant _phonemes_, not vowel and consonant allophones.
> 
> Jacques Guy said of Plan B: "'Twas like waving a red rag at a frog (a 
> bullfrog) and I snapped at the bait merrily." Certainly And's letter to 
> be like a waving a red rag and maybe I snapped too merrily at the bait, 
> but, once again in Mr McEnroe's words, intonation & gestures: "You can 
> not be serious!"

Yes.  While I see how someone can arrive at a "16-phoneme" analysis
of Plan B (because the *graphic representation* introduces a pairing
of consonants and vowels), it is and remains nevertheless inappropriate.

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