Re: lexicon; comments
Saul Epstein 
Thu, 12 Mar 1998 12:37:01 -0600

Quotes from: Sorik of Vulcan
Date: Wednesday, March 11, 1998 9:10 PM
 
> Greetings everyone.

Greetings, Sorik.
 
> First off.  Is the suffix or and ong or and?  I've seen both of
separate 
> web pages.

As I can't interpret your question, allow me to make a suggestion.
When referring to an English word, rather than actually using it in a
sentence, surround it with quotation marks (""); when referring to a
Vulcan word, surround it with angle-brackets (<>).

	-<ong>	"and"
	-<aj>		"or"		(written as <azh> in the original transcrition)
 
> Secondly.  Can someone explain the nasalized vowels?  I don't
really 
> know what they are suposed to sound like.

Speakers of English may have some difficulty initially in
understanding, distinguishing, and producing nasalized vowels. This
is because, in English, all vowels followed by a nasal consonant
(such as m, n, ng) are nasalized automatically. (This is an instance
of a phonological process called anticipatory manner assimilation,
for those who might be curious.) Some dialects of English nasalize
almost everything, which may make things even more difficult...

Nasality refers to the passage of air through the nasal cavity and
out the nostrils rather than through the oral cavity and between the
lips, as is typical. In fact, in order to produce oral sounds, you
have to raise the back of the roof of your mouth (an area called the
velum) until it seals off the passage leading from the throat to the
nose. Nasal sounds are simply sounds made with an incomplete seal.

When a person has a cold, sometimes her velum swells to the point
that it nearly seals off the nasal cavity even when she intends to
speak a "normal" oral sound. That's why a person so affected may seem
to pronounce [m] as [b], [n] as [d], and [ng] as [g]. Saying these
sets over and over while paying close attention to what your mouth is
doing (in back) can be a good way to become conscious of the
difference between oral and nasal articulations. Then, nasalizing a
vowel is just a matter of preventing your velum from sealing off your
nose. Being able to do this appropriately, regardless of whether the
vowel is followed by a nasal consonant or not, will probably take
some practice, depending on what languages you speak well. Speakers
of French, Portuguese, and Polish, for instance will probably have no
difficulty with this at all. I'm not very good at it. ;-)

It has yet to be definitively resolved that nasalization is phonemic
in Vulcan.

> What does the : in such cases as i: u: e: o: ^: mean?

It indicates that the vowel is in a somewhat different position than
that indicated by the letter alone. The difference, for the most
part, is that the articulating part of the tongue is higher in the
mouth. So, [i:] is higher than [i]. (This shouldn't be confused with
"pitch" or "tone" distinctions.)

> Is the a vowel suposed to be pronounced like Bach, like base, or
like 
> bat?

This has yet to be resolved, exactly. We're pretty sure that [a:] is
as in German "Bach," and StandAmEng "stop." But [a] is a bit of a
mystery...

> Are you sure that "iw", and "iwl" can easily be distinguished when 
> spoken?  Is that not important?

"No" to the first, and "I don't know" to the second. The structure of
the pronouns isn't something I'm particularly happy about, but I
haven't spared it much attention so far. 
 
> Can someone explain the whole "We speaker, and you listeners"
theme?

ZC Vulcan distinguishes between two first-person plurals, what are
sometimes referred to as "inclusive 'we'" meaning that "we" includes
the audience and "exclusive 'we'" meaning that "we" excludes the
audience. In English this is undistinguished, and frequently the
cause for momentary misunderstandings. (Do you mean, "only you and
they," or "all of us?")

> In reading chapter 5, I wonder if there should be a camparative
property 
> in this section of the lexicon.  A way to say, like the friend,
unlike 
> the friend, same as the friend, and opposite of the friend.  I
think we 
> will find this neccessary for debate and logical sentences.

Rob may have to respond to this, as I'm not sure how it relates the
work he's done with logical particles. It looks to me that such will
be handled differently in the two modes, though.

--
from Saul Epstein
www <dot> jccc <dot> net <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi
	suraketca'."
							-- K'dvarin Urswhl'at