Hallo!

On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:04:32 -0400, Jim Henry wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> 
> wrote: 
> >but such an
> > a posteriori engelang will still be a compromise of sorts (for instance,
> > how do you achieve self-segregation with an a posteriori vocabulary?).
> 
> Several engelangs are a posteriori but have self-segregating
> morphology.  Ceqli, Voksigid and Loglan/Lojban all come to mind, and
> there are probably others.

Sure.  This, of course, requires some degree of distortion of the
original words, depending on the self-segregation scheme used.
(More on that matter below.)

On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:25:24 -0400, Brett Williams wrote:

> [replying on Jim Henry's lines quoted above]
> 
> That's right, Lojban not only has roots based algorithmically on other
> languages but also borrows a lot of words whole.  Mostly we borrow a
> lot of names for living things: "djirafa" is giraffe, ".oxtopodi" is a
> word for octopus, ".alzaitu" means olive, etc.
> 
> In Lojban the self-segregation is maintained by requiring those
> borrowed words to fit into a certain very weirdly defined class of
> shapes, but nothing that ornate is really necessary.  For instance one
> of my favorite segregation schemes is Qakwan's: It simply splits on
> diphthongs at the end of words.  I don't find the sound of that too
> monotonous at all, and it's also fairly harmless to imported words.

Yes.  There are many different ways to achieve self-segregation.
Some are quite easy, and not as obviously artificial as to rule out
an a posteriori vocabulary.  The self-segregation method of Quetech,
for instance, is both extremely simple and highly accommodating to
borrowed words:

1. All native morphemes of Quetech are exactly one phoneme long.
   The list of phonemes used for these excludes the glottal stop.
   (This also means that the native vocabulary is closed.)

2. All borrowed morphemes of Quetech begin and end with a glottal
   stop, which does not occur in the interior of the morphemes.
   Otherwise, it does not matter at all what occurs between the
   two glottal stops.

One could take this further by singling out a specific phoneme
(need not even be a segmental phoneme, could just as well be a
switch between high and low tone or something like that) which
marks the morpheme boundaries, with no further restrictions on
what occurs between the boundaries.  That way, you could get
self-segregation with virtually undistorted a posteriori
vocabulary.

Yet, I would not call Quetech naturalistic at all.  That is simply
not a goal of it.  It is an entirely different beast than, for
instance, Old Albic, which is meant to be naturalistic.

> Incidentally I think that gzb is a wonderful example of the
> possibility of a harmonious balance between artlang and engelang.

Yes, it is a nice border case between artlang and engelang, but I
wouldn't call it naturalistic.

On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:37:38 -0400, Jim Henry wrote:

> Ceqli's system is also relatively naturalistic in sound, and allows a
> lot of words to be borrowed in very recognizable form: a morpheme
> begins with one or more plosives, fricatives, and/or affricates, and
> ends with one or more vowels, liquids and/or nasals.  That's not too
> dissimilar to the way a fair number of natlangs with strict
> phonotactics allow only a few types of consonants at the ends of
> syllables, although I don't think any natlangs forbid all the
> consonants that are allowed at ends of syllables to also appear at the
> beginnings thereof.  (Do any apply phonotactic rules like this to
> morphemes rather than syllables or words?  I think not, based on some
> things David Peterson posted here some time ago, but I'm not sure.)

I don't know of any natlang which disallows consonants in onsets that
occur in codas.  Usually, the set of consonants that occur in codas are
a subset of those that occur in onsets.  Also, natlang phonological
rules usually do not pay heed to morphemes.  There are, however, many
natlangs where the syllable boundaries can be predicted from the
sequence of segmental phonemes, such that there are no minimal pairs
of words that differ only in syllabification.  There are also some
natlangs that at least get close to having all morphemes one syllable
long.  But I haven't yet seen any natlang with true self-segregation.

> > Incidentally I think that gzb is a wonderful example of the
> > possibility of a harmonious balance between artlang and engelang.
> 
> But this doesn't contradict what Jörg said:
> 
> > Naturalistic languages and engelangs are two entirely different things 
> > which are 
> > virtually impossible to reconcile.
> 
> gjâ-zym-byn is something of an artlang, but it's not particularly
> naturalistic, except in the very narrow sense of trying to avoid
> grammatical structures that seems impossible for the human mind to
> process in real time.

Indeed.  I would not call gjâ-zym-byn naturalistic.  But that doesn't
mean that it is a bad artlang, or an ugly one.  It is well-designed
and interesting.

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