suzmccarth wrote:

> [...]
> The difference between these two sets (both in Quebec)does not
> represent a difference in pronunciation. Diacritics show altered
> vowel length, labialization and preaspiration of consonants. Each
> syllable is encoded separately if the vowel length or labialization
> differs, even though the unpointed, shown in set 2 is the usual
> written style. In Ontario it is popular to point to disambiguate.
> The Cree of Ontario are not ready to publish a syllabics dictionary
> yet - no surpise!
>
> It seems to me that there would be many encodings possible for any
> one word, depending on how one wanted to point it, like set 1, set
> 2, or something in between. How many possible encodings would there
> be for the word "legend"?

As there are 4 binary choices, it's obviously 16 combinations:

a-ti-yu-ka-n
a-ti-yu-kaa-n
a-ti-yu-h-ka-n
a-ti-yu-h-kaa-n
a-ti-yuu-ka-n
a-ti-yuu-kaa-n
a-ti-yuu-h-ka-n
a-ti-yuu-h-kaa-n
aa-ti-yu-ka-n
aa-ti-yu-kaa-n
aa-ti-yu-h-ka-n
aa-ti-yu-h-kaa-n
aa-ti-yuu-ka-n
aa-ti-yuu-kaa-n
aa-ti-yuu-h-ka-n
aa-ti-yuu-h-kaa-n

But I am not quite sure I understant *why* this should be a problem...

--
Marco