Phonology Change?

I just had the darnedest idea for extending the Ceqli phonology.  I've been bothered for awhile that there's no zh sound (as in 'treaSure') in it, though there's a j and both a x and a c for the sounds in SHoe and CHew.  Symmetry demands something better.  I could set j to stand for zh, and then indicate the former j sound with dj. But if I did that, symmetry demands that I drop c and use tx to make that sound. Then I'd have an extra letter, c, that would be good for nothing.  So then I thought of, not adding accented letters, which are a nightmare, but using double letters. Since double letters simply can't occur in Ceqli as it is, double letters could be regarded as letters all by themselves, opening up lots of new phonemes — not that I'd use them all in Ceqli, but they'd be handy for ZH, and also for transcribing foreign words, especially names.

So let's say zz = the sound in treaSure
Then tt = TH as in THin
dd = THere
ff = Japanese bilabial F
vv = Spanish bilabial B

You see where I'm going.

Also, vowels could double, and
aa = cAt
ee = bUt
ii = thIs
oo = German ö
uu = German ü

Again, the only thing I'd regularly use would be zz.  I'd especially like to replace ja je ji jo ju with zza, etc.

Any reactions?

Some Feedback.

From "Argle Bargle"

I'm assuming you'd like feedback on the lessons. I found a few errors in the first few lessons.

http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/5455972/Lesson%202

• ...There's a remote danger that fawl pina will be heard as fawlbwa which might mean ...

I think you meant "fawl bwa"

[Fixed]

http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/5455973/Lesson%203

• Names behave in the same grammatical way that pronouns do, except that when haym or bol, etc. is compounded to the end of a zo name, the whole thing becomes a name, and that behaves like a pronoun.

Did you mean to put it that way?  Summary: "names behave like pronouns, except for [condition] where they behave like pronouns."

[fixed - subbed "and" for "except for".]

Regarding the words "je, ja, ji and jo", I can't tell if it's an omission on the page or an omission in the language, but where is "or" in the sense of most western languages? "this or that, but not both."  (In computer programming terms, "ja" would be "inclusive or," but most natural languages use an "exclusive or.")

[this is amazingly confusing.  I think you'd make it out of "ji," meaning "if and only if." Thus:

Zi fey bwa biru ji vin.  You can drink beer if and only if you drink wine.

Zi fey bwa biru jibu vin.  You can drink beer if and only if you DON'T drink wine.

Logically, I think this is equivalent to:

You can drink beer or wine, but not both.

Let me know if I'm wrong.]

One broad suggestion for the lessons: define the predicates before giving examples. For example, this confused me at first:

• dasa pasa zbano.  or dasa pazbano. Her ex-husband.

"sa" hadn't been introduced yet, nor treating "da" as "her." (Though, with things changing as they have been around the world, it could be seen as ambiguous since it could also be "his ex-husband.")  The "padey, doydey, fuday" example is good, but for completeness, it would have been nice to see "dey = day" preceding it.

[I'll fix this ASAP]

Wikipedia Article

I just noticed that somebody wrote a Ceqli article for Wikipedia. It was about Ceqli as it was many years ago, so I just updated it.  It's HERE.  Let me know if you see any errors or have suggestions for improvement.

Causation

I've been worrying about "therefore" and "because."  Here's a thought.  Let "kaw" mean "cause," and "kwa" mean "be caused by."

Go kaw ke zi dorm.   I cause you to sleep.

Ke Go dorm kwa zi.  My sleeping is caused by you.

Now, suppose we let these words act as prefixes for je, "and."

Go pa don pan ko zi, kawje zi pa kom.

I gave bread to you, therefore (cause-and) you ate.

Go pa kom, kwaje zi pa don pan ko go.

I ate because (is-caused-by-and) you gave bread to me.

Then, if that all makes sense, we can use words like hum, "logic," to form more specific becauses:

Go pa kom to pan, humkawje zi bu fey kom to pan.

I ate the bread, therefore (logically-cause-and) you can't eat the bread.

Or teyqi, "definition" from Japanese.

Da fimsa jin, teyqikawje da jini.

It is a female person, therefore (definition-cause-and) it is a woman.

Other because/therefore pairs could be made with words meaning "motivation," "process," "justify," etc.

Your thoughts?  Thanks to Gleki Arxokuna for help in formulating this so far.

Glossary

Okay, I've gone through the letter A in the Loglan dictionary HERE, and made words for everything except some of the ultra-specialized scientific terms that, at some point, people who know more about such terminology will have to make. I'm thinking that for some of them, like the whole Linnaeus terminology, it will be better to have a "into Latin" prefix, because, after all, everybody much uses the Latin terminology, right?  Again, comments, criticisms, corrections, please! Oh, the glossary so far is HERE.

Random remarks

I'm about ready to go through the Loglan-English dictionary from HERE, and essentially relex  most of it.  Since Ceqli is limited to 70 CV's, or grammar words (14 consonants x 5 full vowels), it just struck me that I can arrange for a very copious set to hold in reserve by the simple expedient of having five "shift key" CV's, thus.  the words va, ve, vi, vo, and vu operate as shifts.  "Si" is a grammar word, and so are siva, sive, sivi, sivo, and sivu.  Hence we have 65 regular CV's, plus 5x65 (325) potential grammar words in the shape CVvC, or 390 grammar words.

And, as you know, Ceqli stress falls on the first syllable, in morphemes and compound words. This leads to something annoying when the augmentive and diminutive gra and pyu are used in the manner of Esperanto -eg and -et.  We have:

dom - house
gradom - mansion

Esthetically, I somehow want the head root to be stressed.  Am I right, and if I am, would it be rational to redefine gra as "is a augmented version of" and pyu as "is a diminished version of," and consider them the head words:

domgra, pronounce DOMgra.

Or is there any real difference?  Like, what's the difference between "human giant" and "giant human"?

Or am I just blinded by the fact that such affixes are suffixes in European languages that I'm most familiar with?

Another thing.  I'm considering importing Loglan po, pu, and zo into Ceqli for use in the same manner.  Any good Loglanists/Lojbanists out there want to advise me on that?  Since I have the principle of terse Ceqli I originally thought that I should replace po with an abstracting suffix, but now I think that's a needless complication, and I can have:

To jino  The man
To po jino The state of being a man, manhood

And for terse Ceqli, when we want to dispense with articles, etc. we can let the po serve as is or oodge in to become a prefix of sorts.

Pojino zwar.  It's hard to be a man.

And the expanded, precise Ceqli would be

To po jino, da zwar.

This actually works better, and also makes it resemble the original Loglan more.

One more borrowing from Loglan:  I want all CV's to be able to take an -r to become predicates. This could even work with that po above.  po jino = porjino. Does that make sense?  Again, comment here or email me at rmay@mac.com

Dictionary revised thru F

At this point I've gone through and revised all my old Ceqli glossaries through the letter F, and the result is here
http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/42067674/Ceqli-Glossary
Do check it out, and let me know if there are any mistakes, typos, logical errors, etc.  Either comment here, or email me at rmay@mac.com.  Any suggestions are welcome.

One oddity.  I was trying to make a word for afternoon.  Well, noon is diacen (day middle), and fu is after, so fudiacen should work.  However, fudia means tomorrow, so fudiacen could mean the middle of tomorrow, or just afternoon.  I copped out and borrowed a Mandarin word for afternoon.  Am I asking too much of fu (and do and pa)?