Conlang Diachronics Relay II (now with schedule!)

ing · Post by **ing** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:21 pm

I'm almost done with mine; a version of the grammar has gone up on the wiki, but I'm still tweaking a few parts of the syntax. I've yet to translate the sample text, but I plan to do that tomorrow so should manage to meet the deadline.

Óhylvídós
It's not what I'd call "ambitious", or even "good". But it's there.

EDIT: Ok, I think I'm done. The sample text is up as is the lexicon.

Nortaneous · Post by **Nortaneous** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:30 pm

ingolemo wrote:Óhylvídós

Óhylvídós has 6 short and 6 corresponding long vowels.

...

For each of the eight short vowels there is a corresponding long vowel, transcribed with an acute accent: á é í ó ú ý.

uh

ing · Post by **ing** » Tue Oct 27, 2009 11:57 pm

thanks for that

Curlyjimsam · Post by **Curlyjimsam** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:04 am

Status:

I've very nearly finished the grammar in terms of technical detail, although it's currently an unreadable mess, because that seems to be my default setting for writing grammars. (I understand it, but I wouldn't expect anyone else to.) Tidying it up shouldn't be a huge issue, though.

I've also started translating the text, though I haven't got very far with that. Again, though, I don't expect that to be terribly problematic.

I'm going away over the weekend, which I wasn't expecting, but I ought to be able to finish by Friday anyway. Otherwise, I should be done by Monday at the absolute latest - but I'll try not to let that happen.

the duke of nuke · Post by **the duke of nuke** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:48 am

4pq1injbok wrote:If roninbodhisattva's stepping out leaves an opening in round II on the Peninsular side, I could step into it -- that way I'd get to use my sound changes from Proto-Peninsular.

That would be really cool; I like those sound changes

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 6:21 pm

I did something stupid and changed the e-mail address in my profile, and couldn't log in to the board until Zomp had activated the new one.

Anyway:

roninbodhisattva wrote:I think I'mma need to completely step out at this point. I just have entirely too much to do right now. hopefully, at some point, I'll be able to resign up.

This is sad. I hope you do come back sometime!

4pq1injbok wrote:If roninbodhisattva's stepping out leaves an opening in round II on the Peninsular side, I could step into it -- that way I'd get to use my sound changes from Proto-Peninsular.

Sure. I'll add you in.

brandrinn wrote:I`d like to join round III of either team if possible. I can offer two things:

1) a guarantee that I will actually produce something before the deadline.

2) it will actually flow organically from the parent language, rather than abruptly change character.

If nobody produces anything by the 1st, I will make a daughter of Cetazo.

I'll add you to the Western group.

brandrinn wrote:Are we using the same map as last time? What time period/level of technology are we starting from?

The continent is the same as in the first relay, and Proto-Peninsular is roughly contemporary with the protolanguages used then, though it is set a few centuries later and the proto-culture is not yet or just barely agricultural. Proto-Western is two millennia earlier (at a neolithic level; its culture is described in some detail here). Its first-generation descendant Proto-Coastal-Western encounters and overruns an urbanized bronze age culture, Lukpanic.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 7:37 pm

Also, I'd like to add another language into the mix. It is the southernmost of Proto-Western's direct descendants, spoken at the edge of the southwestern coastal desert and in the mountains near that. This not an official relay entry -- I started it two or three weeks before the game began --, but the relay got me working on it more intensively, and I think it'll be complete enough to derive a daughter from by Tuesday, in case anyone is interested (unfortunately I won't have any opportunity to work on it between Friday noon and Sunday evening).

What I have so far gives quite a good overview about it though - the morphology section is finished, and there is some basic syntax as well already. Here it is: Tmaśareʔ

eodrakken · Post by **eodrakken** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:43 pm

All right, I'm done and it's up: Iŋomœ́

Let me know if -2000 YP seems too early for a nomadic steppe culture, that was just a guess on my part. And do point out any mistakes!

krinnen · Post by **krinnen** » Wed Oct 28, 2009 11:40 pm

Question: The dates on the turns list represent the dealines or the start of the turn?

In any case, I have to wait for either Nebula Wind Phone or Vortex to finish, right?

(It's not that I'm in a hurry; it's just that I hadn't checked this thread for a long time and I thought maybe I was already late

)

Nortaneous · Post by **Nortaneous** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 1:15 am

I might start soon because it doesn't look like Drydic is going to finish anytime in the near future.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 2:32 am

krinnen wrote:Question: The dates on the turns list represent the dealines or the start of the turn?

In any case, I have to wait for either Nebula Wind Phone or Vortex to finish, right?

(It's not that I'm in a hurry; it's just that I hadn't checked this thread for a long time and I thought maybe I was already late )

No, you're fine, you should indeed wait for them to finish - one or preferably both. The dates did represent deadlines but that was just the advance projection; the real deadline is two weeks from whenever you can actually start.

Tiamat · Post by **Tiamat** » Thu Oct 29, 2009 5:24 am

krinnen wrote:Question: The dates on the turns list represent the dealines or the start of the turn?

In any case, I have to wait for either Nebula Wind Phone or Vortex to finish, right?

(It's not that I'm in a hurry; it's just that I hadn't checked this thread for a long time and I thought maybe I was already late )

Should be done very soon, I just need to finish putting up the syntax and then put my translation of the text up.

Curlyjimsam · Post by **Curlyjimsam** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:17 pm

Presenting Çetázó's descendant: Šetâmol (PDF). Some of the formatting's not quite perfect, but like I said, I'm going away, and I haven't got time to waste on aesthetics.

If anyone's interested in any extra lexis, there's a list here (MS Excel spreadsheet). Unlike the main lexicon (included as Appendix III to the grammar), I haven't applied any semantic shifts here, just sound changes - so regard this list as a little "less official" if you will. But they might still come in handy if anyone wants to use Šetâmol as their starting point in latter rounds.

Nortaneous · Post by **Nortaneous** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 4:22 pm

Nortaneous wrote:I might start soon because it doesn't look like Drydic is going to finish anytime in the near future.

Yeah, Drydic hasn't posted in like ten days. What should I work from?

WeepingElf · Post by **WeepingElf** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 5:02 pm

@ingolemo, Curlyjimsam:

I like what you have made of my language. Good work!

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:13 pm

For the name of the subfamily, can I suggest "Wañelinic?" I like that better than "Çetazoic," which calls to mind the -zoic suffix of Mesozoic, Cenozoic, etc.

krinnen · Post by **krinnen** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 6:53 pm

Dudes, Team A is kicking our collective Team B ass!!!!

EDIT: btw, I'm getting some funky caracters in Zhenlin's P-peninsular grammar (e.g, in the third column of the first table, I read [βũri (little square with for numbers) ɤʔ] ) WTF?

the duke of nuke · Post by **the duke of nuke** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 8:19 pm

To the senior members of the project, especially Radius: What's the current information on Xshalad and its languages?
I know that:
* It's big and very old, with a history stretching back into the distance (sort of like China)
* It's pretty hot and sunny. People there tend to be much darker-skinned than people in the Aiwa Valley.
* By 287 YP at the latest, it had diplomatic relations with the Empire of Athale. At that time it had reached extremely dazzling heights of glory, but was overextended economically and was controlled by shogun-y warlords.
* The language has click consonants and a simple syllable structure.

The reason I ask is because, being on the Peninsular team, it would be good to know what sorts of influences to include in the SW Peninsular languages. I like the idea of a language spoken in a Xshali-influenced or client state and I might do that for my turn.

And as an aside: I also prefer the name Wañelinic.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:15 pm

thedukeofnuke wrote:To the senior members of the project, especially Radius: What's the current information on Xshalad and its languages?

You've got all the main nuts and bolts of it right there. What I know of Xshalad stops in the early first millennium YP; my intention had always been to let others take it from there. Up to that time there have been three Xshali Empires that have controlled a great deal of territory, but I couldn't say exactly how much, over the course of two thousand years. The core of the civilization lies on the floodplain of the great Aiwa-sized river that flows south from the inland sea. Between that core and the Peninsula there are a number of major ethnolinguistic groups: broadly speaking, from left to right they speak Xshali; related !Ho languages; numerous languages unrelated to !Ho or Peninsular; then Peninsular langs. I don't know anything about the unrelated langs, except that clicks are not native to the region (though they may have gained some by influence from Xshali).

The three Empires were separated by substantial interregna during which central control was lost and the provinces were left to fend for themselves. Only the 2nd and 3rd would have had any chance of reaching as far as the Peninsula itself, the 1st would have stopped somewhere in the middle, but the exact border at any point in history has never been decided on. There had been a civilization in the central plain long before the first Empire, comparable to, say, the existence of Sumer long before the Akkadians took it and expanded it. The floodplain is the original, oldest locus of civilization on Akana. But we will know very little of the early times because whatever writing system they had was (probably) not on a durable medium like Sumerian clay tablets are. What we can say is that somewhere around Ndak times (give or take half a millennium) the area was overrun by !Ho-speaking tribes from the west, who were darker-skinned than the originals and completely replaced the native language(s) and much of its culture; these are the people who then expanded into the Empires.

As for influence on Peninsular languages: I can't imagine any influence would be very extensive by the early first millennium YP. The Xshali heartland is a great distance away from the Peninsula with many intervening ethnolinguistic groups. No doubt there would be a number of loanwords, probably filtered through those other languages, but I think we are probably not talking about any major linguistic interference unless your PPI-descendent is spoken much further west than the Peninsula.

After 500-ish YP: I dunno, make up whatever story suits your purposes and we'll work it in.

4pq1injbok · Post by **4pq1injbok** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:34 pm

FWIW, I'm nowhere near done or anything, but anyone who wants to watch the current state of my yet-unnamed Proto-Peninsular descendant as I write it up can look here.

Nortaneous · Post by **Nortaneous** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:45 pm

Oh fuck I just realized my deadline was the 1st. Or at least I think it is; I'm not really sure what's going on anymore. But anyway, can I get moved to the next group? (haven't started for reasons stated above)

the duke of nuke · Post by **the duke of nuke** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:06 pm

Cheers, Radius.
Since I'm in the fourth round, I might well end up doing something mediaeval, so there's hope for it yet.

4pq1injbok · Post by **4pq1injbok** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:07 pm

Curlyjimsam wrote:Presenting Çetázó's descendant: Šetâmol

Ooh, very nicely.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:08 pm

We're still waiting to hear from DD, but yeah, you're basically in group III now, Nortaneous. Since we still haven't heard, please feel free to choose from any of the finished descendents of Proto-Western, along with the rest of group III. (Assuming Drydic comes through, it probably has enough direct daughters for now; it's time to see more granddaughters and great granddaughters.)

Don't worry, you always get your two weeks from whenever you start, that takes precedence over the originally-planned deadline date.

krinnen · Post by **krinnen** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 3:48 am

Radius Solis wrote:We're still waiting to hear from DD, but yeah, you're basically in group III now, Nortaneous. Since we still haven't heard, please feel free to choose from any of the finished descendents of Proto-Western, along with the rest of group III. (Assuming Drydic comes through, it probably has enough direct daughters for now; it's time to see more granddaughters and great granddaughters.)

Don't worry, you always get your two weeks from whenever you start, that takes precedence over the originally-planned deadline date.

Group III? Is that turn III or some 3rd team I'm unaware of?