(From Lognet 93/1)

Sau La Keugru (From the Caretaking-Group = Academy)

The principal subject being considered by the Keugru at the moment is the handling of acronyms especially distinguishing them from strings of letter-variables. A tentative plan for restoring the TAI series to the set of variables available for anaphora a group of words which we have begun to call proarguments on the model of the English word 'pronoun' has been provisionally adopted and implemented in a new LIP. Briefly, the rule now is that vowel letterals when initial in an acronym, e.g., the [A] in [AFL] (henceforth we will use square brackets in this column to indicate written forms) will now be pronounced in their full three-letter VCV shapes. Thus [A] alone will be pronounced /Ama/ and the whole acronym [AFL] will be read aloud as /amaFAIlai/; for the acronymic word is still a predicate and thus penultimately stressed. [AFL] may still be written out as [AmaFaiLai], of course, as a textual alternative, in Loglan, to writing it as an acronym.

We anticipate that the one-letter vowel forms V may still be used to pronounce non-initial vowel letterals in acronyms, pretty much as described in NB3:50-54. Thus [Fe], the chemical symbol for iron, will probably still be pronounced /FAIze/which is /fai+z+e/, where /z/ is the acronymic hyphen and optionally written [Faize]; although the role of hyphen /z/ is still under study.

In fact, the whole rule-set for generating acronyms in writing and resolving them in speech has come under review. A satisfactory set of rules will enable our ears to distinguish properly formed acronyms from strings of letter-words in speech: [AFL] from [A F L], thus leading the resolver to compound some strings of little words and leave others uncompounded. As a temporary expedient, LIP is new using a brute force solution to this problem and requiring that any two adjacent letter variables be separated by a pause. Later, when stress and disyllabicity are added to the information in the input stream, LIP can use a more subtle and natural strategy for making the same discriminations.

The resolver that will do this work for LIP is still being talked about. So the Keugru is not yet ready to publish the new rule set for the formation of acronyms as contrasted with variable strings, and the production of both in speech. Please be patient with us as we wrestle with this pleasant little problem.

At the moment LIP only accommodates textual input. Eventually we all want it to be able to accept phonemic input as well, that is, a stream of textual signals that accurately represents the acoustic structure of Loglan speech. We hope to be able to report out a version of LIP which will be able to accept this kind of input within a year. We believe it will be a reasonably short step from the LIP that can accept a stream of phonemes, and uniquely resolve them into Loglan utterances, to the LIP that can actually listen to and resolve audible Loglan speech.