Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

[Arzena]

I've been looking over Proto-Lukpanic again - I forgot how terribly charming it is. It has a rather Zompistean feeling about it. I am now adding some quirky new words, including an idea that came to me in a dream once: an independent lexical item meaning "rotten onions." (in the dream, it was for Zomp's Old Skourene, one of my favorite conlangs ever.)

WHY do the Lukpanab have a special word that means "rotten onions?" I don't know. I'm sure there's a good reason.

I have an idea: In their first voyages to the Coastal Corridor, the Lukpanab sailors encounter the ritual alcohol théllú, which is made from human breast milk. Upon tasting it, the Lukpanab declare it to taste like "rotten onions". Since drinking an alcohol made from human breast milk would be something I would remember after a long sea voyage, the peoples of the Coastal Corridor (Empotle7á and northern Tmasere speaking tribes) would have a distinct place in my memory. As time progresses, the Lukpanab only remember the peoples of the Coastal Corridor by the rotten-onion tasting concoction they drink.

So, 'rotten-onion' eventually receives synecdoche and comes to mean 'any Western-speaking tribe of the Coastal Corridor'.

[Radius Solis]

I like your proposed usage of tsegga. But I never noticed that there weren't any names for the seasons in the Edastean stock. It would be nice if we had some, that were of ancient lineage.

The spirit moved me to make some native season names for Ndak Ta, should they prove helpful to anyone. All forms below are given in standard NT.

In the times when the Ndak ruled only Latsomo, their division of the year into seasons recognized only two: rikraun or "winter" and iadopm or "summer". These season concepts were centered on agriculture: summer was when the plants grew well, winter was when they did not.

The Ndak had no names, as such, for "spring" or "fall" - instead they had a verb for each change of one season to another. These were simply auspi ta or "become green" in the springtime, and namowi ta or "become brown" in the fall. By the time of Tsinakan these verbs fell out of use in Kasadgad. Not because the seasons did not remain distinct, but because the metaphor failed - the Aiwa delta is basically green all year, and both winter and summer crops were grown there. But in Latsomo these verbs remained in use, and developed participial adjectives of their own, later nominalized: lu auspikintsa and lu namowikintsa, "the greening" and "the browning". Both words are among the rare examples of the NT middle participle form.

Also in common use throughout the Ndak empire were colloquial synonyms for winter and summer, lêtsaulau (cold time) and bubwitslau (warm time), a metaphoric extension of the "place" suffix -lau to a temporal meaning, which happened occasionally in NT. Lêtsaulau survived into Naidda as its primary name for winter, which I already had in its lexicon as "lïsholo".

[Zhen Lin]

I came across the following poem today, and I thought it might make an interesting translation challenge. In the context of Akana, it seemed to fit best with the traditions of Etúgə or Toło, so I decided to try my hand at Namɨdu, even though it's not my own conlang. I hope that my translation, which makes extensive use of nominalized adjectives in the appositive case, sounds at least somewhat poetic and not completely non-native...

Minds free,
Thoughts gone,
Brow clear,
Faces serene.
Were they cool?
Only as cool as autumn.
Were they hot?
Not hotter than spring.
All that came out of them
Came quiet.
Like the flower season.

I would have to do a lot of work to make it metrically constrained, so instead I opted to constrain it by translating it as two words per line.

nοnṓs ēzestassí,
ōmomoī́ mīvī́ni,
momalé ōskhelḗi,
momykhá eieí.
lenkȳsái khḗ?
aōphintythé dasseí.
gyrēsái khḗ?
meiūmínto teirḗni.
lymbrioíri hýmei
sȳzōkhó abríou.
eānintythé vimnḗri.

νονώς ἠζεστασσί,
ὠμομοί μιϝίνι,
μομαλέ ὠσχελήι,
μομυχά εἰεί.
λεγκυσάι χή;
ἀωφιντυθέ δασσεί.
γυρεσάι χή;
μειυμίντο τειρήνι.
λυμβριοίρι ὕμει
συζωχό ἀβρίου.
ἐανιντυθέ ϝ̔ιμνήρι.

nο~nōs ēzestass-i,
PL~mind do.freely-STA,
ōm~omoī mīv-īn-i,
PL~thought leave-PF-STA,
mo~malé on-skhele-ei-i,
PL~brow ACC-clear-PF-STA,
mo~mykha eie-i.
PL~face peaceful-STA.
lenkȳs-ai-i khē?
cool-PF-STA Q?
aōphinty-the dasse-i.
autumn-ESS only-STA.
gyrēs-ai-i khē?
warm-PF-STA Q?
meiūmintο teri-ēn-i.
spring COMP-NEG-STA.
ly-mbri-oi-r-i hymei
ABL-come-PF-PTCP-STA all
sȳz-ōkh-o abri-oi-o.
quiet-GER-EVT come-PF-EVT.
eāninty-the vimnēr-i.
flower.season-ESS be.like-STA.

[Cedh]

Great to see a sample of Vylessa!

rikraun "winter"
iadopm "summer"
lu auspikintsa "the greening"
lu namowikintsa "the browning"
lêtsaulau "cold time"
bubwitslau "warm time"

Buruya Nzaysa will use reflexes of the first three items, namely rɛyrɔ "winter", ya’ɔwa "summer", and spexətsa "spring". I'm not sure about "autumn" yet; *namɔwəxətsa seems too clumsy. Maybe nzɛwəslu, from ndepeslau "harvest time"?

For Ndok Aisô, "spring" and "autumn" should probably be oispihêseu and nabagihêseu. For "winter" and "summer" I'd like to suggest similar formations, which might lead to hêseu (the reflex of the middle participle) be reanalysed as a general term for season... If these terms are based on aipi "freeze" and mus "grow", they'd end up as oipihêseu and muskêseu. The first of these is too similar to "spring" though, and the second one doesn't lenite the *k, so maybe use colors here too? dauwai "white" gives dagaihêseu, which is quite nice. For summer, what about a metaphorical usage of rampa "lush, abundant" (as "multi-colored"), which would come out as rafêhêseu?
(For reference, the outcomes of the original terms would be rikraud and ixeudop, and the derivations in -lau would turn out as lêtsoiloi and bugitsloi. If the latter undergoes initial metathesis to *ubbʷitslɒj, we could also get uk'itsloi.)

[Radius Solis]

Buruya Nzaysa will use reflexes of the first three items, namely rɛyrɔ "winter", ya’ɔwa "summer", and spexətsa "spring". I'm not sure about "autumn" yet; *namɔwəxətsa seems too clumsy. Maybe nzɛwəslu, from ndepeslau "harvest time"?

It does seem clumsy, although if it were me I might keep it anyway, as every language has its share of clumsy words and they do provide some character. On the other hand, I went too far with that when I came up with ngkwaimpaugng...

I might borrow ya’ɔwa instead of the Faralo loan that Naidda's presently got for "summer", I like it better. That would come out to ya'åwa in Delta Naidda.

[Corumayas]

Fun stuff, everybody! It's neat to see new words appearing all over the place.

In case it wasn't clear from my earlier posts, I also have no problem with your proposal at this point. It seems like it might require some rethinking of TzirTzi's Siixtaguna Culture scenario, which I don't mind if he doesn't. And if it means also revising other parts of the prehistoric scenario (such as the Three Waves and/or the Canoe Cultures), that's fine with me too-- as long as we think it all through carefully, of course. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of here!

I don't mind indeed - what specific points did you have in mind?

I didn't have detailed points in mind-- but I suppose the geography would have to be modified a little: to start with, the N-T speakers would be moving south-to-north rather than east-to-west. And maybe the dates would need some adjustments too, I'm not sure.

It might help if we had a more concrete outline of the new scenario. Basilius, would you be able to write one up?

[Basilius]

Well, I don't have a ready description (I don't think I qualify to compose one), but I have a few questions/proposals just to start the discussion.

1. It seems that PNT was spoken around -2600 YP somewhere in the Sumarušuxi area (N. or E. Ik'im?).

By that time, the story about the expansion of both Canoe Cultures had been basically finished, so the new expansion needs a new explanation.

The key factor could be e. g. larger settlements, which could be associated with new fishing methods; for example, they could require larger boats with more crew, or maybe fleets of small vessels. The key technological innovations, then, could be (improved) fishing nets and new food conservation techniques (salting?).

The skills required for coordinated work in large teams and fleets might be essential in military success of the historical Takuña (first as pirates and coast raiders, roughly after -1000 YP).

Since the innovations in question don't seem to pop up in TzirTzi's description of the PNT culture, it can be assumed that they belong to a somewhat later period (after -2200 YP?) and could unite several groups of NT speakers as well as some of their linguistically unrelated neighbors.

TzirTzi, how do you like this?

2. The known history of the Isles peoples implies that the (pre-)Núalís and the (pre-)Takuña spread along the coast of Siixtaguna but didn't colonize the adjacent islands (until ~ -500 YP?). The latter bit needs an explanation, too, since the islands don't appear to be particularly difficult to reach, for the rather advanced seafarers like the historical Takuña.

It can be suggested that at first the NT speakers established few relatively large settlements which were far between, at sites that offered a combination of conditions that made them particularly attractive and wasn't available on the islands.

Such conditions might include:

(a) Availability of quality wood. If the climate of the islands was windy enough, it might happen that they (especially their coastal areas) could offer only creeping pines or similar dwarf trees.

(b) Presence of rock salt deposits in the vicinity. Such deposits just didn't exist, or weren't quickly discovered, on the islands.

(c) For various reasons, especially convenient could be estuaries of big to medium-size rivers which the islands lacked.

By ca. -500 YP some technologies had changed and/or some trade routes stabilized, making it possible to supply newly established outposts with all the essential resources.

On the other hand, from ca. -1000 YP on, shortage of some resources could be felt locally because of intense exploiting, which might contribute to increased colonization activity (especially by the Takuña, in the vast region from the Lotoka Coast to northern islands).

Besides issues related to culture, this part needs an examination of various factors related to geology and climates. Corumayas? Cedh? Radius?

3. The Coastal branch of the Siixtaguna Culture was entirely composed of various NT-speaking groups (the Núalís, the Takuña, and a couple related peoples around the the Lotoka Coast). But the Continental branch wasn't homogeneous and was rather an amalgamation of several local components (some of them representing the former Northern Canoe Culture) with the NT component.

One can imagine that certain NT-speaking groups moved inland along river valleys. Larger settlements could be crucial in making this component dominant (and the result of interaction, more like another branch of one common Siixtaguna Culture); it might resemble the familiar interaction of urban and countryside cultures, only with smaller range of settlement sizes.

TzirTzi? Corumayas?

4. It would be interesting to have some NT-speaking groups already present on Ttiruku by -1500 YP (the approximate date for the Isles speakers starting to move); this probably means that NT expansion should start before -2000 YP at the latest.

* * *

Tear this to pieces :)

[dunomapuka]

rikraun "winter"
iadopm "summer"
lu auspikintsa "the greening"
lu namowikintsa "the browning"
lêtsaulau "cold time"
bubwitslau "warm time"

What shall we do about Fáralo? It's zomp's language, but I feel like he'd rather leave the random word-creation to us. I suggest:

eibidə spring (auspi ta)
išaupe summer
edébelo fall (ndepeslau)
rikron winter

The last is sort of boring, so it could later be replaced with some Etúgə term.

[Basilius]

A potential problem...

2. The known history of the Isles peoples implies that the (pre-)Núalís and the (pre-)Takuña spread along the coast of Siixtaguna but didn't colonize the adjacent islands (until ~ -500 YP?). The latter bit needs an explanation, too, since the islands don't appear to be particularly difficult to reach, for the rather advanced seafarers like the historical Takuña.

Cf.:

3 The Canoe Culture
The next significant development for Siixtaguna was a native one: the "Canoe Culture" was the distinctive product of the eastern coast and islands. Beginning with the invention of the canoe around -6000 YP, the Canoe Culture spread along all the coasts of the subcontinent, reaching Sumarušuxi by about -4000 YP (whence the Ultimundic migration towards Tuysáfa began).

(Emphasis mine.)

Upon re-reading these bits, I realized that I don't have a ready explanation for one thing: why the islands like Tymytỳs and Mûtsinamtsys remained uninhabited until -500 YP, in the first place?

That is, they were near the very epicenter of expansion of the NE Canoe Culture, and 5+ KY hadn't been enough for the supposedly maritime folks to start colonization?

(I have the feeling that I've seen this issue touched upon, but I can't recall where, nor what explanation was proposed... ??)

[Corumayas]

That is a little awkward, isn't it.

Taking a step back, I think the basic difficulty here is that there are at least three not-really-related scenarios that we're trying to fit together: the information found in the original grammars of the Isles languages, TzirTzi's ideas about PNT and the Siixtaguna culture, and Salmoneus' Canoe Culture scenario. It seems like we can maybe get two of these to mesh, but all three might just be too much.

I'll try to reply in more detail later, but I want to talk about something unrelated at the moment:


I have two etymological questions for the whole group. In both cases the etymology is of an important name that's been around since the beginning of the Akana project, so I don't feel I can decide it on my own.

First, Kasadgad comes from a Ngauro word kasd~ka(s)d, which I think means either 'many streams' (referring to the Aiwa delta) or 'many boats' (referring to the riverboats of the Ngauro). Which is better? The first seems like a more natural placename; but I kind of prefer the second-- it sounds more interesting to me, and it also allows PEI *gasd to provide the word for 'boat' in both branches of Eigə-Isthmus (the Faraghin cognate is gars). A while ago Cedh suggested that we put it up for a vote, since it's such an important name... so what do you all think? Was Tsinakan the Great king of the Land of Many Streams, or the Land of Many Boats?

Secondly, while updating the Proto-Isthmus lexicon yesterday I stumbled on a new and interesting possible etymology for Ferogh! My previous idea was that it was PI *pe 'people' + *josg, with the meaning of *josg unknown. But what if it was *pe as-dosg 'people of the camp'? This would involve changing the vowel in the word *dasg 'camp', but that's no problem since *a and *o merge in Faraghin. It's also different from other Faraghin noun-noun compounds of this type, in that they don't usually have any trace of the PI genitive marker *as-; but that could be because this is a much older compound (that prefix, or rather, the consonant mutation that it leaves behind, becomes unproductive by the Proto-Ferogh stage anyway). So again I ask all of you: does 'People of the Camp' seem like a worthy name for the ancestors of the Faraghin and Feråjin?

(I'm especially interested in the opinions of the oldest Akana oldbies here: these names were your creations originally, you should have a say in what they mean!)

[dunomapuka]

Regarding the various scenarios for the prehistory of PNT etc., I would give TzirTzi's ideas the most weight. The original Isles grammars can give us a guiding framework but we should be willing to admit they could be wrong in the details (e.g., those islands might have been inhabited previously). Sal's Canoe Culture idea, as I recall, was just a random thing proposed in this thread - a good idea, but ultimately just a theoretical consideration that we should scrap if it doesn't fit with the other data.

While we're at it, I think the Isles peoples need to be established on those Ke'idû'us'as (etc.) at a much earlier date than -500, given what we know about their cultural history. I can't quite accept a people going from illiterate nomads to Plato-like philosophers in less than 100 years! (I prefer the idea of them being an earlier wave of Isles settlement than the "Nuclear" Isles people, which means they should get to their islands around -1000 or earlier.)

As for Kasadgad, I vote for "Many Streams." The "Boats" option is cool, but I think "Streams" is a much more poetic and specific way of describing that particular area.

Finally, "People of the Camp" is awesome!

[Basilius]

Finally, "People of the Camp" is awesome!

Yes, semantically it's... exquisite :)

Was Tsinakan the Great king of the Land of Many Streams, or the Land of Many Boats?

While I don't count as your real hardcore oldbie, I'd like to point to one more possibility: 'Stream(s) of Boat(s)', with two different but phonetically similar roots and a subsequent (irregular) distant assimilation making it look like a reduplication (when the semantics got obscured). Think of it, this would add twice as many entries in the proto-lexicon! :)

Taking a step back, I think the basic difficulty here is that there are at least three not-really-related scenarios that we're trying to fit together: the information found in the original grammars of the Isles languages, TzirTzi's ideas about PNT and the Siixtaguna culture, and Salmoneus' Canoe Culture scenario. It seems like we can maybe get two of these to mesh, but all three might just be too much.

Regarding the various scenarios for the prehistory of PNT etc., I would give TzirTzi's ideas the most weight. The original Isles grammars can give us a guiding framework but we should be willing to admit they could be wrong in the details (e.g., those islands might have been inhabited previously). Sal's Canoe Culture idea, as I recall, was just a random thing proposed in this thread - a good idea, but ultimately just a theoretical consideration that we should scrap if it doesn't fit with the other data.

Yes, the NE Canoe Culture bit seems least interwoven with the rest... In particular, I don't seem to notice any strong reasons for it to emerge in the very NE, and not in e. g. the piece of coast immediately NE of Lotoka.

While we're at it, I think the Isles peoples need to be established on those Ke'idû'us'as (etc.) at a much earlier date than -500, given what we know about their cultural history. I can't quite accept a people going from illiterate nomads to Plato-like philosophers in less than 100 years! (I prefer the idea of them being an earlier wave of Isles settlement than the "Nuclear" Isles people, which means they should get to their islands around -1000 or earlier.)

I agree with the overall reasoning towards "the older the better", and "-500" is indeed not very likely, but I am not sure about exact dates. The main thing: the islands in question are too far from the Ttiruku Arc, and we haven't decided on the stopover territory/territories; this detail appears to be crucial in dating the colonization.

(Affalinnei was first reached by Isles-speaking groups by ca. -1000 YP, but those groups had just moved along the Ttiruku Arc and never needed to cross huge distances by sea.)

[Radius Solis]

I quite like "people of the camp" as an etymology! Gets my vote.

As for Kasadgad, I vote for the original proposal "place of many streams", both for its quality as a placename and, more personally, because it fits nicely with the name's external history. The ultimate source was a verb in the Tohono O'odham language (kaṣaḍkad) meaning "to spread the legs", and metaphorically speaking that's exactly what the Aiwa is doing in Kasadgad. Not that that's why I picked the name, but later on it seemed appropriate, and then even more so when it turned out the name could actually have an internal etymology that referred to the same feature.

[Cedh]

"People of the camp" gets my vote too, it's a great etymology. And "Land of many streams", if I have to decide.

Also, while adding lots of terms for places and people to the Buruya Nzaysa lexicon (which has exactly 1000 entries right now!), I've discovered that Ndak Ta lacks several important kinship terms, for instance "family", "parents", "grandparents", "grandmother", "grandfather", "aunt", and "uncle". For "family" I've used a reflex of bwed ta "son-DYNAMIC" as in Naidda; the others are yet to be defined...

[Radius Solis]

Some cultures lack specific terminology for anything but first-degree relatives, because everything else can be described in terms of those - "mother's father", "daughter's husband's brother", etc. I think I had chosen for NT to work that way by having only the basic eight terms mother/father, son/daughter, brother/sister, husband/wife. So I'll leave the lexicon alone in this area, but to make compound etymologies easier, we can at least set up some conventionalized ways for the Ndak to form kinship phrases.

1. They usually dispense with the possessive pronoun phrase whenever context allows: no need to say lu mebwe âki "the father of me" whenever just lu mebwe will do. This is possible with everything, not just kinship phrases - the possessive pronouns were originally not meant to be obligatory, even though I've always used them. So let's say that ncluding one is never wrong, just wordy, and may be preferable in higher registers (such as would be found on the Tsinakan stele).

2. Let's say they also tend to drop the definite article from medial positions in a kinship phrase: lu merkat âk mebwe, rather than âk lu mebwe, for "the brother of (my) father".

3. We can also have them apply the vowel hiatus rule to the medial preposition after mebwe and omo - lu omo âk mebwe would then typically be pronounced as though it were lu omâk mebwe because the final vowel of omo drops out before the âk. But with netrai and omau we get [j] and [w] glides instead: lu omau âk omo would be pronounced as though it were omawãk omo.



And of course Faralo has all those kinterms it took from Faraghin, I recall there being a good number of them. I grabbed several for Naidda too. The son-DYNAMIC etymology for "family" I basically calqued from Adata, which uses son-COLLECTIVE for the same thing.

[Corumayas]

Ok, it looks like there's a pretty strong consensus on the etymology questions! I'll give it a few more days before I make the results official though, in case anyone else wants to weigh in.

Regarding the various scenarios for the prehistory of PNT etc., I would give TzirTzi's ideas the most weight. The original Isles grammars can give us a guiding framework but we should be willing to admit they could be wrong in the details (e.g., those islands might have been inhabited previously). Sal's Canoe Culture idea, as I recall, was just a random thing proposed in this thread - a good idea, but ultimately just a theoretical consideration that we should scrap if it doesn't fit with the other data.

Yes, the NE Canoe Culture bit seems least interwoven with the rest... In particular, I don't seem to notice any strong reasons for it to emerge in the very NE, and not in e. g. the piece of coast immediately NE of Lotoka.

Or for it to be as early as Sal proposed (-6000 YP!), either. It might make more sense for long-distance seafaring to develop later, maybe with the PNT speakers themselves...? Of course this would affect other things, such as the Ultimundic migration, so it requires careful thought. But I definitely agree that preserving the Canoe Culture scenario is not a high priority.


I think we should be able to make the Isles grammars fit though. The extremely brief introduction to the Máotatšàlì grammar, while it doesn't say anything about the historical situation, does suggest to me that the Núalís were probably the indigenous inhabitants of Tymytỳs "and several neighboring islands", so there's actually no problem there at all.

And on rereading the Mûtsipsa' grammar, I realize that actually there are only two islands that aren't said to have Takuña populations: Ke'idû'ûs'as (the large island where the Mûtsinamtsys first arrive) and Duutkejdih (about which nothing is said except that it's the most distant from Ke'idû'ûs'as).

In my opinion, the grammar would mention Takuña if there were any there, since the whole story is about the relationship between those two groups; but I think the only thing that really needs explaining is why the Mûtsinamtsys didn't encounter them on Ke'idû'ûs'as. My suggestion for this is that the Takuña at this time were a mainland-based, agricultural culture (they must have had approximately the same level of agriculture and technology as the Mûtsinamtsys, since they met and competed on an equal footing), and had perhaps only recently begun settling the islands.

There probably would have been other people on Ke'idû'ûs'as, who simply don't figure in the story because they were quickly and easily replaced (or absorbed) by the Mûtsinamtsys. I'd say these people must have been less technologically advanced than the Takuña and Mûtsinamtsys, maybe without full-scale agriculture. Maybe they were more closely related to the Núalís (who seem to have been similarly replaced on Tymytỳs).


So (setting aside the Canoe Culture), the sequence of events I suggest is something like this:

1. The Coastal Siixtaguna Culture settles all the offshore islands. They are just as TzirTzi describes: seafaring hunter-gatherers with maybe some small-scale garden agriculture. The Núalís are their descendents in the northeast (Tymytỳs etc.).

2. Some time later, a related group on the mainland, the Takuña, adopt full-scale agriculture and expand along the coastal plain. (They probably originate in the south, maybe near Lotoka; they could be descended from a southern branch of the Coastal Siixtaguna Culture, or maybe even from a Continental group...?) They begin colonizing the nearest offshore islands, but (for some reason) don't establish themselves on Ke'idû'ûs'as.

3. Not too long after this, the Isles peoples arrive and take over the large islands of Ke'idû'ûs'as and Tymytỳs. The rest of the story is as in the Mûtsipsa' grammar.


Does this make sense to you guys?

[Radius Solis]

2. Some time later, a related group on the mainland, the Takuña, adopt full-scale agriculture and expand along the coastal plain. (They probably originate in the south, maybe near Lotoka; they could be descended from a southern branch of the Coastal Siixtaguna Culture, or maybe even from a Continental group...?) They begin colonizing the nearest offshore islands, but (for some reason) don't establish themselves on Ke'idû'ûs'as.

Perhaps they didn't settle on that island because it lacked what they needed for the sort of agriculture they'd developed? Whatever that may have been? And then the late-Isles speakers who got to Ke'idû'ûs'as had no issue because the agricultural practices they were most familiar with were more suited to the island? I suggest this because most large-scale agriculture is irrigation-dependent, whereas small and medium sized islands tend to have few or no significant rivers. Especially when it's land built mainly of lava flows, which makes for ground that's far too porous for rainwater to stick around near the surface very long. And the Isles people have been living on islands for a long time at this point and are almost certainly accustomed to growing crops with rainfall alone.

That would still leave the question of how the Takuña settled the one island in the chain that they did settle. But perhaps there was something on that island that they wanted enough to make it worth shipping grain there to support a settlement. For volcanic islands this resource probably would not be a metal or mineral, unless they had a major use for obsidian, but it could have been anything from fish inthe local waters to feathers from birds that nested only there.to a supply of a valuable ornamental wood, who knows.

[dunomapuka]

That would still leave the question of how the Takuña settled the one island in the chain that they did settle. But perhaps there was something on that island that they wanted enough to make it worth shipping grain there to support a settlement. For volcanic islands this resource probably would not be a metal or mineral, unless they had a major use for obsidian, but it could have been anything from fish inthe local waters to feathers from birds that nested only there.to a supply of a valuable ornamental wood, who knows.

Or guano!

[Corumayas]

The Takuña actually settled two of the islands-- Dûkejdih and Nin Dûke'i. On the former, they competed on an equal footing with the Mûtsinamtsys; and the latter is described as "a small, fertile, round island" and "a thriving Takuña colony." So it doesn't sound to me like they had any trouble farming those islands. I really think it's the island they didn't settle that's the exception.

Ke'idû'ûs'as is larger than the other islands, and on the map it's also further north. Maybe there's something about its size, or its location (e.g. climate?), that explains why the Takuña hadn't settled it yet when the Mûtsinamtsys arrived?

[Basilius]

1. The Coastal Siixtaguna Culture settles all the offshore islands. They are just as TzirTzi describes: seafaring hunter-gatherers with maybe some small-scale garden agriculture. The Núalís are their descendents in the northeast (Tymytỳs etc.).

2. Some time later, a related group on the mainland, the Takuña, adopt full-scale agriculture and expand along the coastal plain. (They probably originate in the south, maybe near Lotoka; they could be descended from a southern branch of the Coastal Siixtaguna Culture, or maybe even from a Continental group...?) They begin colonizing the nearest offshore islands, but (for some reason) don't establish themselves on Ke'idû'ûs'as.

3. Not too long after this, the Isles peoples arrive and take over the large islands of Ke'idû'ûs'as and Tymytỳs. The rest of the story is as in the Mûtsipsa' grammar.

I like the idea of less advanced groups present on the islands before the Takuña, but I haven't imagined the latter to be really good agriculturalists (practicing complex irrigation methods or whatever).

Besides, I doubt if in coastal areas agriculture alone could *quickly* create enough an advantage (in terms of population densities etc.) against an economy centered on fishery, especially at the latitudes in question.

So maybe we should consider technologies related to fishery, as with my proposal plus necessary corrections?

* * *

OK, at any rate it is clear that for the Núalís-Takuña component we have a variety of potential explanations to choose from...

Now, the Isles component.

I think we still have the Big Stopover Problem. That is, we need to decide on the last areas which the two Isles-speaking peoples occupied immediately before starting the colonization of the northern islands. Possible options seem to be these:

(1) An island which is part of the Ttiruku Arc. This implies that the Isles-speaking groups in question formed, essentially, a naval superpower of their time, reliably transporting the colonists across much of the Siixtaguna Ocean (the ocean between the two continents, N. of the Tt. Arc) and successfully competing with the Takuña near the home territory of the latter. (I am exaggerating a bit, but anyway.)

(2) A coastal area in Siixtaguna. This would mean that for some time those Isles speakers lived essentially in the same areas as the Núalís-Takuña peoples and spread by essentially the same route, only later. Several questions pop up immediately: those Isles groups had to be more advanced in some way than (e. g.) the Takuña, but why couldn't they root in the continent then? Or if they weren't more advanced - how could they move along the coast already occupied by a similarly maritime culture, and then successfully compete with it for the islands?

(3) Neither of the above two - e. g. an island or group of islands roughly halfway between the northern islands and some part of the Ttiruku Arc. Might solve most problems with the other two options, but creates a new one - with geotectonics (in fact, some candidate islands are discernible in our recent maps, but as I understand their geological plausibility is questionable.)

Any ideas?

[Radius Solis]

I'd just like to confirm that I am still working on the Puoni reboot and that I'm quite happy with what I'm getting so far. The lexicon is all I'm doing at present, but it's a big job, even compared to the original -- discounting grammatical words, the Faralo dictionary has essentially doubled since then. Among words from the first version of Puoni, maybe 2/3 of them have identical outcomes with the updated sound changes, but because various changes were dropped or reworked, the words that differ often differ substantially.

The net results are as vowel-heavy as ever, but I went a little lighter on the deletion rules so as to leave more meat on more words. Last time there were far too many cases of words losing all the sounds that made them distinct, so the raw SC output had whole large sections that went like bio, bio, bio, bio, bia, bia, bea, bei, bei, bei, for example. I've fixed that now.

I don't know that I'll ever get to writing up much of a grammar, as Edastean grammars all start to look the same after a while, and it does get old. Puoni's basic grammatical character can be predicted pretty well just by examining Faralo and Buruya Nzaysa. So the lexicon is my focus for the foreseeable future... but speaking of B.Nz, I'm considering dropping most of the Naidda loanwords and borrowing them from Buruya Nzaysa instead, because 1. Buruya is closer to Kuaguatea (new spelling!) than the delta is and 2. the non-Miw local inhabitants at the time of the Puoni exodus probably mostly spoke B.Nz anyway. They certainly wouldn't have spoken Delta Naidda.

The dictionary size itself is going to be impressive, just because enough appropriate source material now exists for Puoni's story and setting to go leaps and bounds beyond the other large Akana dictionaries. If I keep plugging away at it I should definitely be able to pass 1500 entries.

[Corumayas]

Radius, I'm looking forward to seeing it! Now that there are a few other daughters of Fáralo around it'll be interesting to compare it with them.

I like the idea of less advanced groups present on the islands before the Takuña, but I haven't imagined the latter to be really good agriculturalists (practicing complex irrigation methods or whatever).

Besides, I doubt if in coastal areas agriculture alone could *quickly* create enough an advantage (in terms of population densities etc.) against an economy centered on fishery, especially at the latitudes in question.

So maybe we should consider technologies related to fishery, as with my proposal plus necessary corrections?

Sure. Maybe a reasonable model could be the Algonquians of New England-- according to Wikipedia, they relied primarily on agriculture in the south (which is about the same latitude as the southern part of the Takuña coast), but further north fishing and hunting were more important. (There's some helpful figures for population density toward the bottom of that section too.)

In any case, my concern is really just that the Takuña should 1. be a fairly even match for the Mûtsinamtsys after they arrive, and 2. be advanced enough to make their adoption of writing and development of sophisticated philosophy (by, say, -500 YP or so) plausible.

I think we still have the Big Stopover Problem. That is, we need to decide on the last areas which the two Isles-speaking peoples occupied immediately before starting the colonization of the northern islands. Possible options seem to be these:

(1) An island which is part of the Ttiruku Arc. This implies that the Isles-speaking groups in question formed, essentially, a naval superpower of their time, reliably transporting the colonists across much of the Siixtaguna Ocean (the ocean between the two continents, N. of the Tt. Arc) and successfully competing with the Takuña near the home territory of the latter. (I am exaggerating a bit, but anyway.)

(2) A coastal area in Siixtaguna. This would mean that for some time those Isles speakers lived essentially in the same areas as the Núalís-Takuña peoples and spread by essentially the same route, only later. Several questions pop up immediately: those Isles groups had to be more advanced in some way than (e. g.) the Takuña, but why couldn't they root in the continent then? Or if they weren't more advanced - how could they move along the coast already occupied by a similarly maritime culture, and then successfully compete with it for the islands?

(3) Neither of the above two - e. g. an island or group of islands roughly halfway between the northern islands and some part of the Ttiruku Arc. Might solve most problems with the other two options, but creates a new one - with geotectonics (in fact, some candidate islands are discernible in our recent maps, but as I understand their geological plausibility is questionable.)

Any ideas?

Well, one thing to keep in mind is that the two groups don't have to follow the same route.

I don't care for option 2, especially for the Mûtsinamtsys-- mostly for the reasons you give (and also because the Mûts. grammar clearly says that they discover the mainland of Siixtaguna after colonizing Ke'i'dû'ûs'as). So I'd vote for option 1 and/or option 3-- whichever looks most plausible, I suppose.

But surely this question depends partly on the relationships among the different Isles languages. What are your current ideas about that?

[Basilius]

Radius: it all sounds very interesting, post more!

Corumayas: thank you for the link, it's useful indeed!

Well, one thing to keep in mind is that the two groups don't have to follow the same route.

But surely this question depends partly on the relationships among the different Isles languages. What are your current ideas about that?

OK, a few points have changed since our last discussions of this subject.

The revised Thokyunèhòta isn't OSV anymore; therefore, my former proposal about Máotatšàlì having had a common substrate with it becomes pointless.

However, I still prefer to view the V-first WO of Máotatšàlì as secondary, and its emergence looks like a rather odd innovation, especially since Máotatšàlì seems also to require rheme to be put before theme (or at least before a backgrounded theme; this is how the examples in the grammar look). That is, a somewhat unusual substrate would be still very helpful; I was thinking of a language or languages where OVS or VOS provoked fronted rhemes as the default. (This bit needs an elaboration, obviously...) The point relevant to our current topic is that Máotatšàlì probably used to be part of some Sprachbund which no other Isles language had ever contacted with.

Pre-Máotatšàlì and pre-Mûtsipsa' were rather deviant dialects of Late Proto-Isles (nearly as deviant as pre-Ppãrwak). This may mean that their location within the original Isles-speaking continuum was marginal, and their speakers could start off either earlier or later than the mainstream dialect speakers. However, it has been becoming increasingly clear to me lately that the two have little in common with each other besides overall oddity per se. In other words, there is no positive evidence suggesting that the two dialects contacted when still in Tuysáfa or soon after the start of the Exodus.

Some common lexical material found in the two languages looks rather like reflecting very recent contacts which probably took place when both the Tymúlaslì and the Mûtsinamtsys lived already on the northern islands.

That is, the default hypothesis seems to be that indeed the two peoples reached their historical homelands by two different routes which never crossed.

Similarities with other Isles languages look rather random too.

I don't care for option 2, especially for the Mûtsinamtsys-- mostly for the reasons you give (and also because the Mûts. grammar clearly says that they discover the mainland of Siixtaguna after colonizing Ke'i'dû'ûs'as). So I'd vote for option 1 and/or option 3-- whichever looks most plausible, I suppose.

I like (2) least, myself.

And (1) implies, in fact, *two* advanced maritime "superpowers" which are older than the Takuña.

Then (3) looks best. Then we need more islands.

I don't understand what the relief of the W. Tuysáfa plate should look like. Do we have a gradual lowering from the land in the East to the ocean in the West? Is it plausible to have some groups of islands along the Western coast of Tuysáfa? In the middle of the ocean?

In any case, my concern is really just that the Takuña should 1. be a fairly even match for the Mûtsinamtsys after they arrive, and 2. be advanced enough to make their adoption of writing and development of sophisticated philosophy (by, say, -500 YP or so) plausible.

OTOH it seems that the ancestors of the Mûtsinamtsys, to match the Takuña, must have occupied a relatively large landmass before they started colonizing the northern islands...

[Radius Solis]

Then (3) looks best. Then we need more islands.

...

OTOH it seems that the ancestors of the Mûtsinamtsys, to match the Takuña, must have occupied a relatively large landmass before they started colonizing the northern islands...

Not necessarily, on either point. Firstly, it would be perfectly realistic to place small islands in the middle of that ocean, small enough they wouldn't necessarily show up on the world map (and thus not requiring it to be changed yet again), the sort of islands that are formed by single volcanoes each and then gradually erode away over the eons,... like Polynesia, which is also located in the middle of a large and deep ocean basin. Remember that the scale of a world map is very large, so any islands that are visible on it are quite substantial.

Secondly, there is no reason a strong seafaring society cannot form on a large number of small islands instead of a small number of large ones. This happened repeatedly across the South Pacific, including Polynesia, so we're on firm territory here, and meanwhile I see that there already is a very large island right in the middle of that ocean, against all probability.

Thirdly, this all lines up nicely with the original intent of the Isles scenario as I understood it. I remember comparing notes with Ran about that back during the original game when we were devising our proto-languages; I described the Aiwa Valley we'd come up with in Team 2 and he described the Austronesian-parallel model he'd picked for Team 1. I'm fairly sure i remember him saying something about a large ocean filled with lots of little islands, although it's true my memory of a single conversation six years ago could well be faulty.

FWIW, the sizes of many of the existing islands in that ocean are already unrealistically large. Tymytỳs is probably alright because that's probably continental crust (part of Siixtaguna that's only separated by shallow straits, not deep seabed), but the islands of the entire Ttiruku chain are wildly out of proportion to what a mid-oceanic subduction-zone island arc should look like - by a whole order of magnitude! The appropriate tectonic parallels for them are the Aleutians, Kuriles, Ryukyuan islands, Marianas, or Lesser Antilles, not Japan or Indonesia, even though Ttiruku island itself is around the size of Sumatra! Which is geologically insane! Meanwhile putting Dagaem where it is was pushing it already (this one's my fault), but the addition of the even larger Fmana-hŋ-Talam nearby was totally beyond reason, and even the re-drawn Ke'idû'ûs'as is still bigger than many US states and three or four times the size of the island I modeled its geology on (also my fault).

The bottom line is we've had a serious long-term problem with not understanding the map scale, starting right at the very beginning when Zompist drew the original versions of most of these islands. It's too late to change it all, and some of it is my own fault for also originally not understanding the scale, but I'd at least like us to back off from the idea that islands need to be really huge to matter.

[Basilius]

Radius: first off, an hour ago I'd say that I'd hate any major revisions of our maps. My idea behind the claim that we need more islands was basically to provoke a discussion which would clarify e. g. how big the island could realistically be which we already have north of the Tt. Arc in our most recent tectonic map, and whether there might be smaller islands around it. Also, I agree that groups of smallish islands would do the job as well, maybe even better since they'd provoke faster progress in navigation.

But your observation about our islands being already too large by whole order of magnitude is... ehm... embarrassing... May be we should discuss *this* first, before we make any decisions on migrations &like.

I am a real hardcore nube in geotectonics, so please bear with me. The example of Japan seems to illustrate that relatively large islands can look like part or continuation of subduction-zone island chains (the Ryukyus and the Kuriles in this case), and Wikipedia says this is due to back-arc basin type of formations. Is anything of that sort imaginable for Sumarušuxi and Ttiruku?