Re: Musical conlangs (was: Poetique)

On Friday, January 9, 2004, at 07:37 PM, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Costentin Cornomorus :
[snip]
>> in particular, so I may be wrong: I suspect that
>> a person familiar with Solresol will not need a
>> distinct pause between each word for the same
>> reason he doesn't need one in English.
>
> He will, because otherwise he just cannot parse the language. It is too
> ambiguous.
Yep - I must agree, having revisited my info on the language. It simply
doesn't work the same way as English or, indeed, natlangs. We're dealing
with a language which:
1. has only 7 possible distinct syllables;
2. has words one of one, two, three or four syllables;
3. has no distinctive way (like stress, length, pitch) to mark a 'tonic'
syllable
in words or otherwise distinguish word boundaries.

>
>> That's only a shade over two standard octaves.
>>
>> Of course, I'm not sure why Solresol is
>> restricted to three note words either.
>
> IIRC, the rule is that lexical items are three notes long, while two
> notes and one note words are grammatical.
The 7 one note/syllable words are:
do = 'no', 'not', 'nor'
re = 'and', 'also'
mi = 'or', 'or else'
fa = 'to/at', 'to the/at the' (French: à, au)
sol = 'if' (conditional - not indirect question)
la = 'the' (French influence?   :)
si = 'yes', 'of course' etc (oui, soit, volontiers, d'accord)

I won't list all 49 two-syllable words! But they consist of 'grammatical
word' such as:
dodo (marker of imperfect and the 'plus-que-parfait' indicative)
rere (marker of simple past & the 'passé antérieur' indicative, as well as
the imperfect & pluperfect subjunctives)*
mimi (marker of the future & future perfect indicative)
fafa (marker of the present & past conditionals [I would ..../ I would
have....])
solsol (marker of the imperative)
lala (marker of the present participle & perfect active participle e.g.
writing, having written)
sisi (marker of the past participle [e.g. written])
The markers a placed, as separate words, _in front of_ the verb.  The
unmarked verb serves
as both infinitive and the present (and, I assume, perfect) indicative.

*Both the 'plus-que-parfait' and the 'passé antérieur' normally translate
like our
'past perfect' (pluperfect), e.g. (I) had written. I'll let Christophe
explain the
difference  :)
[Thinks: Do you detect a French influence in the language design?]

But two note/syllable words also denote pronouns, prepositions,
conjunctions, some adverbs like 'well', 'badly', 'a lot' etc, and
miscellaneous words like:
mila = 'voici', 'voilà'
misi = 'good evening', 'good night'
simi = 'good day'   (reverse of the one above - Sudre was fond of these
reversals)
sisol = Mr, Mrs, Sir, Ma'am, gentleman, lady
sila = Miss, young man, bachelor, girl etc.

The three & four note/syllable words were certainly lexical.

> The problem is, all possibilities are used, so it becomes nearly
> impossible to parse without a pause after each word,
Absolutely true.

> and because the language fails like many languages of that time: it tried
> to "organise" the world, and thuse fabricates its vocabulary according
> the the same principles as philosophical languages of the time (i.e.
> similar-sounding words have similar meanings).
Also, I discover, quite true.
 =========================================================================
On Friday, January 9, 2004, at 07:43 PM, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Costentin Cornomorus :
[snip]

>> Like I say, I don't know that much about
>> Solresol. If so many possibilities exist, that
>> sounds like a design flaw.
>
> Well, I do think that SolReSol, while a good idea in theory, was poorly
> executed.
Yep - the weakness, as it seems to me, is to maintain one-to-one mapping
between
visual & auditory versions of the language. If you're using colored lights,
  or
written symbols, then 'white space' is the obvious way of delimiting words.
   The
mistake is surely the insistence on mapping visual white space to a pause
in the
auditory (i.e. musical note) version.  This could, has John has observed,
have been
done by lengthening one of the notes (either the first or the last would
seem best
to me).

Alternatively, you could have had all words of equal time length, thus, e.
g.:
one syllable -    minim; half note;
two syllables -   crotchet, crotchet; quarter note, quarter note;
three syllables - crotchet, quaver, quaver; quarter note, eighth note,
eighth note;
four syllables -  four quavers; four eighth notes.

The only possible problem is the method of allowing one just to _speak_
the names of
the notes/pitches - but even here a stress or raised pitch on the
delimiting
syllable/note would be quite easy.

Ray
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