The necessity of audiovisual isomorphism

[shanoxilt]

As we all know, Solresol can be written, sung, color coded, numerically coded, or signed. If we wish to promote them all as equally valid, we need a way to make them equally usable.

Among Lojban users, there is an important concept called "audiovisual isomorphism". Basically, it advocates a one-to-one mapping of the written and spoken forms of Lojban. In my opinion, this is even more important -- and more difficult!-- for Solresol.

[Taytanchik]

The problem here, if I got it right, is to find a method of representing stress and lengthening for each form of Solresol... or rather to find ONE method for each form.

As I see it, the problem can be divided into two problems:
1. To choose ONE method out of many to be the official method - like in writing, where you have d'oremi, dôremi, dóremi, dooremi, DOremi etc.
2. To find a method for the forms of Solresol that don't have any, yet. Like number Solresol. 123 for doremi, d'oremi, dor'emi...* or for color Solresol, morse-style Solresol...

*one could maybe use "-" for lengthening and ' for stress, e.g. 1'23 for d'oremi

[Dan]

The problem here, if I got it right, is to find a method of representing stress and lengthening for each form of Solresol... or rather to find ONE method for each form.

As I see it, the problem can be divided into two problems:
1. To choose ONE method out of many to be the official method - like in writing, where you have d'oremi, dôremi, dóremi, dooremi, DOremi etc.
2. To find a method for the forms of Solresol that don't have any, yet. Like number Solresol. 123 for doremi, d'oremi, dor'emi...* or for color Solresol, morse-style Solresol...

*one could maybe use "-" for lengthening and ' for stress, e.g. 1'23 for d'oremi

Your #2 I will cover in a little bit. As far as #1, I think the community as a whole likes the idea of keeping the language as close to Sudre's version as possible, so I think Sudre's words can certainly help us with (if not make) those decisions.

----

The way I see it, there are two ways to handle this issue:

• Give the two types of accents a representation in Full Solresol. This would instantly make Solresol universally audiovisually isomorphic, because every accepted and proposed form must necessarily support the full form at its roots. Another argument for this way is that it is already used for verb tenses/moods. However, this does diminish the "meta" quality of the accents, making similar forms of a word (such as gender and part of speech) less similar in appearance. Also, it would require an additional word for each accent in a message.
• Work out the one-to-one mappings for each form, with proposed forms including their proposed mappings. This is the one Taytanchik covered above. This keeps the different forms of a word similar in appearance, but it requires work for each new form of Solresol. Also, it would add a learning curve to Solresol's forms, as each form would essentially be a new language with unique rules of representing accents. On the plus side, it would allow Solresol to adapt to various media of communication (for instance, a knocking form could use a special kind of knock for accents, instead of being limited to one kind of knock and having to disregard accents). Also, it would allow for likely shorter messages, as the way of communicating an accented syllable would (hopefully) be shorter than communicating an additional word for each accent.

Disregarding accents, as has been previous suggested, could be an accepted "slang" way of communicating Solresol, but accents could make a huge difference in Solresol. "He married a woman" is different from "He married a man", which is different from "He married men [or women]." Therefore, I see it as necessary to support accents in Solresol by some means.

I have additional thoughts on the issue of audiovisual isomorphism, but I would like to hear others' thoughts on which of these methods (or another method I haven't considered) would work best before I go into more detail.