http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8549454.stm
The prototype device could allow people to conduct silent phone conversations.
The technology measures the tiny electrical signals produced by muscles used when someone speaks.
The device can record these pulses even when a person does not audibly utter any words and use them to generate synthesised speech in another handset.
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D: This is a match made in heaven for Visemese!
( I stopped calling it Deafese, since one need not be deaf to benefit from it.)
I suspect it has some sort of military tactical value in covert ops.
We had a few signs used to tactical matters in the infantry.
Cross your forarms for obstacle. Thumbs down for enemy. And so on.
http://www.lefande.com/hands.html
SWAT tactical signs. Very nice.
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Decimese. Stress system.
I could never figure out what to call Decimese. Is it heavily prefixing or suffixing? Dunno.
Well I'm reading "Sound Patterns in English" by Chomsky. It was written around the time I was born, but is still a classic. It is called SPE almost universally.
Anyway, I gained insight into the English syllable stress system. Decimese is based on English stress. Well, Decimese only has, in its basic form, 'weak syllables'. That places the stress on the penultimate syllable.
So (syllable=S) S1S2...S4S5 would be stressed on S4. Presumably English means we'd stress S2 in a secondary fashion.
I'm not sure what impact a vowel diphthong will have. Does the presence of a 'long vowel' - denoting a complex syllable with even just one consonant after it- qualify as such in a diphthong? If not, nothing changes. If so, then the stress system would shift, according to English instincts. The stress would shift to the final syllable.
In the example S1S2S3S4S5, primary stress goes to S5, and presumably secondary (s?) to S1 and S3.
A good example of shifting stress in English is tele + graph.
Telegraph. Telegraphic. Telegraphy.
SPE also made me think about the impact of adding a mid-word compound noun -N noun ending to the first noun in a compound noun. If we have vowel Vv diphthongs acting as complex syllables, then the mid-word -N noun ending will change stress, IF Anglos consider a diphthong to include a long vowel. (Sorry for shifting between 2 sets of terminology.)
E.g. S1S2 + S3N.
If we have S1S2NS3N, then if S2 contains
1) CV construction (consonant-vowel) +N, we have a weak syllable.
2) CVv+N, we may have a strong syllable if the diphthong qualifies as a long vowel.
The shifting stress becomes useful as an additional aid to parse word boundaries, or in this case major parts of a compound noun. I may still consider mandatory explicit prepositions in compound nouns (and verbs et al) to be desirable.
The black board. The board that is/with/of black A black board would then default, by virtue of word order, to adjective + non-compounded noun. We must consider Mandarin, though.
D: Decimese should be a sensible compromise between English and Mandarin. When either language has exceptions that allow variable word order, for example, we have an opportunity to match up word order with the other language that has invariate order. And so on.
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SPE also made me think about the errors that I make in English.
They tend to be outside of a phrase. Obviously my mind is unable to retain information between in-bracket transformations for later use. My working memory just isn't anything to write home about.
For example, I often mistake primary subjects and screw up single/plural agreement.
A meandering description of noun contents seems to do it.
I also fail to get verbs to agree in long sentences.
And prepositions get swapped or go missing.
Spoken sentences are subject to how much air our lungs hold.
Well, my written sentences are every bit as subject to working memory.
A creole-style set-up reduces working memory demands. That man there. He has goats and sheeps. He my brother.
I wonder if placing the primary noun first is desirable.
The man's goats. The goats of the man.
The goats of the man, (they)...
Topicalizing with a switch to pronoun bears some passing resemblance to ASL.
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