zompist bboard

Nice... I'll be taking Tmaśareʔ as my parentlang.

@thedukeofnuke: cool idea, but I like Tmaśareʔ better than PCW. =(

*goes to check out Tmaśareʔ...

2 questions, for cedh [or any other experienced relayer]:

1) how much creative freedom do I have with regards to the conhistory that goes with the conlang'

2) where do I find info on who were the guys that spoke Tmaśareʔ ??

I'm not qualified to answer... but I have a related question (for boy #12):
How much liberty do I have with the descendants of Proto-Lukpanic? I'd like to have my Coastal language become the language of Isi, so the changes from PL are of interest. Can I shuffle changes around as long as they fit the forms in the table, or is there a specific set that I should use?

Torco wrote:1) how much creative freedom do I have with regards to the conhistory that goes with the conlang?

A lot, provided (a) it is realistic, i.e. it could plausibly have happened on Earth given a similar starting situation, and (b) it doesn't conflict with anything that has been established so far. With Tmaśareʔ the latter isn't too much of a constraint though, because nothing has been written about the regions immediately adjacent to the Tmaśareʔ homeland yet.

2) where do I find info on who were the guys that spoke Tmaśareʔ ??

By asking me. I have a general picture in mind but I haven't really worked on the culture yet, partly because I wanted to focus on the language first, and partly because I simply don't know much about prehistoric cultures in that particular geographic situation.

Maybe you can start from a more solid level of knowledge here, based on personal familiarity with the climate: the environment should be in many ways similar to north-central Chile, i.e. the southern edge of the Atacama desert (except that it's located in the northern hemisphere, the mountains run ENE-WSW instead of straight N-S, and because of the shape of the NW edge of the continent there is not really a cold ocean current). So: a narrow dry coastal strip, fertile only along the rivers; otherwise mostly fairly sparse scrubland vegetation, fading to desert in the SW and light mediterranean forest in the NE. Some 50-100km from the coast, a high mountain range, with peaks at 5000-6000m a little lower than the Andes; the western slopes are mostly dry but probably more fertile than the lowlands, and a little further south (where the coast is true desert) there is a temperate and comparatively fertile highland area much like the Inca heartland around Cuzco, which is home to the (otherwise not very Inca-like but yet undeveloped) Wellawi civilization (Tmaśareʔ for "mountain-people").

Culturally, the Tmaśareʔ speakers are still somewhat similar to the Proto-Western culture described by Dewrad; crucially, their religion is still built around the concept of kwaco. Due to the scarcity of resources in the dry environment, most of the maybe 10,000-15,000 speakers of Tmaśareʔ (is this too much btw?) are not fully sedentary; usually they migrate up and down a river with the seasons, focusing on fishing at the coast in the dry summer, small-scale agriculture in the river valleys in the more humid winter, and goat- and sheep-herding as well as hunting all year round. Villages are often moved every few years so as not to exhaust the soil too soon. Bronze is known but obtainable only from trade with other Western or even Lukpanic peoples further north, which doesn't happen too often (the Tmaśareʔ speakers don't have much to offer in return). Writing is unknown.

Apart from this very short sketch, I can't tell you much at this point, but I'd be interested in working out more in collaboration with you (and possibly others). It might be a good idea to create a thread for this on the AkanaForum.

There's a thread there, in which I've bent -verbosely and with annoying grammar, I might add- my ideas on the matter at hand.

thanks for the intro, BTW'

thedukeofnuke wrote:I'm not qualified to answer... but I have a related question (for boy #12):
How much liberty do I have with the descendants of Proto-Lukpanic? I'd like to have my Coastal language become the language of Isi, so the changes from PL are of interest. Can I shuffle changes around as long as they fit the forms in the table, or is there a specific set that I should use?

You have lots of liberty. What's written in the table is just a suggestion, and feel free to change it if the results displease you.

I haven't even really done anything with the grammar beyond what you can abstract from what's on the page and in the lexicon. It's supposed to be somewhat agglutinative, with lots of different locative suffixes (meaning "facing toward," "facing away from," "within," "surrounding," etc.).

The lexicon of Xekhä is done, at least the lexicon that it inherited from Tmashare? The sound changes it underwent are these.


* the palatar-alveolar distinction collapses
* obstruents elide after [x], which makes [x] differentiate from /h/ into /x/. this happens because of allophonical /h/->[x]/_Obstruent . /x/ is <kh>, since it originates in the elision of obstruents, and thus it makes sense to me.
* final /?/ elides into nothing
* the /?/ - /k/ distinction collapses... /?/ remains as a common medial allophone of /k/.
* final /e/ goes
* stressed /o_n/ becomes [o:]
* [oe] and [eo] turn to /we/ and /ew/, respectively
* UVR: only stressed /e_n/ and /a_n/ retain nasalization, unstressed ones go [e] and [a], respectively.
* UVR: /e/ and /o/ merge into [3], wich can be either long or nasal when stressed, depending on heritage.
*/J/ and /n/ aren't distinctive anymore, /J/ leaves a [j] after /n/ when before an obstruent. intial /J/ goes syllabic, and becomes [ni].
* initially and before , /t/ becomes /tS/.



Which were applied using VSCA and this syntax, just in case you're interested.


A=crysnptkshmnwlrjaeiou
C=cñrysnptkshmnwlrj
O=ptcknmñ

h/x/_O
O//x_
ʔ//_#
ʔ/k/_
e/i/_#
á/ä/#C_
é/ë/#C_
ó/[oo]/#C_
á/ä/#CC_
é/ë/#CC_
ó/[oo]/#CC_
á/ä/#CCC_
é/ë/#CCC_
ó/[oo]/#CCC_
[cc]/c/_
á/a/_
é/e/_
ó/o/_
o/e/_ UNLESS #CCC_ OR #CC_ OR #C_
o/[oo]/_
[oe]/[ow]/_
[eo]/[ew]/_
[ññ]/ñ/_
ñ/[ny]/_O
ñ/[ni]/#_
ñ/n/_
t/s/#_
i/ß/t_
t/c/_ß
ß/i/_
[oo]/[e]/_
x/[kh]/_
[pp]/p/_
[ss]/s/_
s/ŝ/_
c/x/_
y/j/_



=>COMMENT: this is probably not the best or most efficient way to make these changes happen, but this is really my first go at sound changes, so don't be surprised by mistakes that might appear.

As for the grammatical changes, I have them on paper, and I will be uploading the Grammar of Xekhä soon. [/code]

Torco wrote:The lexicon of Xekhä is done, at least the lexicon that it inherited from Tmashare? The sound changes it underwent are these.

- What do <x ŝ> stand for?
- You're basically making the language lose all back/rounded vowels, which is very very unlikely. Unless all vowels have back/rounded allophones when adjacent to /p m w/ or something.
- These changes probably don't cover more than 300-400 years, so you might want to add to them. Tmaśareʔ allows quite a lot of different consonant clusters, which you don't do much with. IMHO these might be even more likely to undergo some simplification than the already simple vowel system.
- Also, your sound changes include a few mergers, but as far as I can see no consonant splits apart from [x]-induced obstruent lenition.

cedh audmanh wrote:

Torco wrote:The lexicon of Xekhä is done, at least the lexicon that it inherited from Tmashare? The sound changes it underwent are these.

- What do <x> stand for?

tS and S

cedh audmanh wrote: - You're basically making the language lose all back/rounded vowels, which is very very unlikely. Unless all vowels have back/rounded allophones when adjacent to /p m w/ or something.

/3/ has, of course... also /3_n/ might be realized as [o_n], I'm still checking that out... I might incorporate /u/ somehow, thus yielding a nice Y-shaped vowel system

cedh audmanh wrote: - These changes probably don't cover more than 300-400 years, so you might want to add to them. Tmaśareʔ allows quite a lot of different consonant clusters, which you don't do much with. IMHO these might be even more likely to undergo some simplification than the already simple vowel system.

a good idea, playing around with the clusters

cedh audmanh wrote: - Also, your sound changes include a few mergers, but as far as I can see no consonant splits apart from [x]-induced obstruent lenition.

so?

oh, and /h/ splits into /h/ and /x/, no?

The translation of the first part of the sample text into Hośər is up on the wiki, together with some nominal morphology stuff.

So the new year seems to have eaten up some of the momentum that this relay had before... but I don't think we should just let it fade that easily.

What's the current status of those relay entries which haven't yet been officially marked "done"?

Relay schedule wrote: Team A: Western

Drydic Guy (from Proto-Western)
Abi (from Óhylvídós): Ohilí (WIP)
brandrinn (from Iŋomœ́)
kohorik (from Iŋomœ́): Satnímʔa (WIP)
caedes (from Çetázó): Hośər (WIP)
PeteTheMadScientist (from Tmaśareʔ)
Tarasoriku (from Tmaśareʔ)
Torco (from Tmaśareʔ): Xekhä
thedukeofnuke (from Proto-Coastal-Western) (WIP)
Arzena (from Proto-Western): Empotle7á (WIP)

Team B: Peninsular

nebula wind phone (from Proto-Peninsular): Merneha
faiuwle
krinnen
Kuanye
ulan

My progress so far in this relay has been exactly 0.

Why do I say this? Because I don't want it to sound as an excuse when I say the following.

My fucking notebook died. I sent it today to Buenos Aires because of the warranty. Fuck. I'm begining to see it wasn't the relay, it's just me who'¡s cursed.

I sure hope your computer can be fixed.

That said... you know the curse is real when Cedh makes a checkup call and only one out of half a dozen "participants" even replies.

It think it's probably best not to put me on the official schedule - if I wind up finding time, I'll look through the currently up-for-grabs langs and not announce anything until I have a definite plan in mind. I just seem to always be juggling way too many projects at once, plus school, that trying to schedule hobbies doesn't actually work anymore. Plus, I seem to be most productive when I randomly decide, "hey, I'm going to make a time-travelling lang!" (or similar) and spend several days working on that instead of studying for midterms.

Tl;dr: Am flake. Please ignore.

I'm still around... and my Coastal language will see the light of day, sooner or later. I've just fought through a serious work crisis at uni, so progress can now resume
Although the language is still in the early stages of development (just starting on morphology) I do have a reasonable amount done on the culture. That at least should be up on the wiki in the next few days.

You probably haven't seen much of me before--I've been lurking here for a while but not posted much. Anyway, I'd like to make a conlang for this, a Coastal Western language, if that's okay. I've already made a basic sketch.

Go for it. I'll be happy to have some more loanwords for my own CW language

Is this the same thing as the Cursed Relay?

Welcome, Alces!

Mbwa wrote:Is this the same thing as the Cursed Relay?

Technically, this thread is a successor to the original Cursed Relay game. Pragmatically, it's simply part of the same conworld.

Alright, cool.

cedh audmanh wrote:Welcome, Alces!

Thanks. I've put up a phonology of the language on the wiki: http://www.superlush.co.uk/~akana/index ... gb%C3%A0ku.

That looks pretty sweet so far! I like the way it's picked up labial-velars.

I think, though, that the date of -1300 is rather early. Proto-Lukpanic as described is supposed to be spoken around -1500, and PCW around -1800; my descriptions of late Ishe Lukpanic and Ishe Coastal date to -670 and -450 respectively, and the current plan is that the Coastal peoples take over the Lukpanic states between roughly -1000 and -200. I'd suggest early first millenium BP for Ìletlégbàku - but I'm sure things can be rearranged.

I see. It can easily be redated then--the date doesn't really matter much to me. I wanted the date to be early so Lukpanic words could be borrowed not too changed from their Proto-Lukpanic forms, but if you're working on Ishe Lukpanic, I can borrow from that.

Well, just make up your own conservative dialect if you want
Dunomapuka has said that people are free to derive Lukpanic dialects for whatever purpose; Ishe (which is itself quite conservative considering the 700-year-plus time depth) is supposed to be the dialect of a single city-state conquered relatively late by the CW peoples. For that, I just picked a few sound changes based in the "Examples" section of the Lukpanic page so I could have a slightly more distinctive vocab.

Good idea, I'll do that . I think my language will be spoken to the east of yours, since going from the examples the easternmost dialect of Naəgbum still distinguishes labial-velars as labialised consonants. That will be the dialect most of the loanwords are from. I think I'll date it to -900 or so, because I want the Lukpanic states to still be present and not have started their decline much. Maybe Naəgbum has already been captured by Westerners then, and Ìletlégbàku would be the language of the capturers.