Akana Conlang Relay 2011 (The Never Ending Relay)

[the duke of nuke]

Brilliant! It'll be great to have you back

[Basilius]

I know there's a scientific distinction. I just didn't see what was so different about them, functionally. It's like having separate words for red deer and white tailed deer. I thought maybe there was some major difference I was overlooking.

Well... there's probably a reason that English has two unrelated words for lice and fleas (and a third for ticks, which are also broadly similar). I expect many Neolithic people would notice at least that some of the little bitey things jump and others lay eggs

What I had on my mind was in the first place diachronic stability. Both 'flea' and (especially) 'louse' tend to be very stable terms, known for several protolanguages (moreover, IIRC for Proto-Austronesian we know distinct terms for 'body/pubic lice' and 'head lice').

Apparently, these beasts used to be much more important than a present-day resident of a country with well-organized sanitation can imagine - those terms seem to be about as stable as terms for main body parts!

Same consideration with 'wasp' vs. 'hornet' - for example, in both today's English and today's Russian these words directly reflect the same two distinct PIE roots.

(I am sorry for having not commented on a lot of topics, here and especially on the T2 secret board - I'm a bit busy these days; expect a flood of comments from me a bit later =) )

[dunomapuka]

Uhoh, can I stay in the game? I could put my language further along the peninsula than duke, or something. Though it would give us an extra team member.

[communistplot]

If members of your team don't care then I for one say you're welcome to stay aboard, now all our team needs is another bro/sis to match. ;D

[the duke of nuke]

I'd be more than happy for you to stay - just east along the peninsula would be great.

[SlayerXX33398]

If Team 2 has an extra, and Team 1 needs someone to fill in, I'll join. Just let me know what's going on, how much grammar is needed, and I'll get to it.

[the duke of nuke]

I'm OK with you joining - it depends on the approval of the other team members, though.

[Cedh]

If Team 2 has an extra, and Team 1 needs someone to fill in, I'll join. Just let me know what's going on, how much grammar is needed, and I'll get to it.

Welcome! I've added you to the Team 1 group on the other forum. We don't have a full description of the protolanguage yet, so some of what has been proposed in the grammar and phonology threads is a bit out of date. I hope to post something tonight or tomorrow though that should be complete enough to start deriving a daughterlang from.

[Pogostick Man]

Welcome to the group, SlayerXX33398!

[the duke of nuke]

I've just had a thought: Where are we going to publish our (descendant) grammars?

I'd like to do this on the wiki, since that's where I'd hope they'd end up anyway. Is this ok with everyone, and if not, how shall we do things?

[brandrinn]

I've just had a thought: Where are we going to publish our (descendant) grammars?

I'd like to do this on the wiki, since that's where I'd hope they'd end up anyway. Is this ok with everyone, and if not, how shall we do things?

If I have a word processor document, will I be able ot just copy and paste everything without incident, or will I need to do something fancy?

[WeepingElf]

I've just had a thought: Where are we going to publish our (descendant) grammars?

I'd like to do this on the wiki, since that's where I'd hope they'd end up anyway. Is this ok with everyone, and if not, how shall we do things?

OK with me.

[the duke of nuke]

Brandrinn: You'd need to do a bit of work on the formatting, but generally it's pretty easy. Tables are trickier, though; I recommend looking at the wiki pages to see how they're done.

To be fair there's no real problem with using a text document. Someone like me or Cedh can wikify it later, as I did with Zele.

[SlayerXX33398]

I can definitely tell this will be fun, and will be a great way to challenge myself. Just one more thing; how much of a grammar should I provide for my daughter lang, just a sketch? Just the morphology? Or a huge 40-50 page masterpiece?

[WeepingElf]

I can definitely tell this will be fun, and will be a great way to challenge myself. Just one more thing; how much of a grammar should I provide for my daughter lang, just a sketch? Just the morphology? Or a huge 40-50 page masterpiece?

A sketch, laying out the basic phonology, morphology and syntax, plus a few hundred words and preferably a brief sample text.

[the duke of nuke]

As an example of a good grammar published for the original relay, I'd recommend Zompist's Fáralo grammar. It's got a solid description of morphology, a bit of syntax including transformations, and a full lexicon. (The blue text was added after the relay finished, since that's essentially the spoiler text.) I'd aim for something similar as a guide to your language.

For a "post-relay" version it can be as long and detailed as you like; Jamna Kopiai, Ndok Aisô, and Wendoth are some of the most extensive we have, but writing a grammatical description that sort of length during the relay timetable would be punishing

[Corumayas]

It looks like I'll have a bit more free time than usual during the next few weeks. You seem to have all the relay participants you could possibly need, but is there anything else I could do to help?

[Basilius]

It looks like I'll have a bit more free time than usual during the next few weeks. You seem to have all the relay participants you could possibly need, but is there anything else I could do to help?

In fact, the reasonable limit for the number of participants is the number of coequal branches that we want for the families being designed. And I don't think we need to worry while the latter number is less then 10.

Besides, I don't think it's crucial at this point that the number of languages designed by each team is the same; I don't see much trouble with one team submitting six languages and the other seven, for example. Nor with the numbers made equal by some player submitting two languages instead of one, or something.

[communistplot]

It looks like I'll have a bit more free time than usual during the next few weeks. You seem to have all the relay participants you could possibly need, but is there anything else I could do to help?

You could help me out with my daughterlang. (Despite my classes on it, I'm still clueless when it comes to diachronics. >.>)

[Corumayas]

Actually, Cedh has already recruited me to help him polish up the protolang for Team 1.

After that, if I still have extra time on my hands, I might be up for helping that team out some more, and possibly for deriving a daughter myself-- both assuming nobody on either team minds, of course!

[the duke of nuke]

Certainly! Cedh has suggested that you could do a Team 1 daughter language along the south coast, in an area surrounded by Team 2 languages - an idea that I find interesting.

[brandrinn]

There are gaps in the area occupied by Team 2 speakers all along the coast to accomodate just this sort of thing.

[brandrinn]

Attention Team One: Potɑnsʉti is now officially up at the Akana wiki, although it is still a work in progress.
http://tzirtzi.ipage.com/akana/index.ph ... ns%CA%89ti

[Herr Dunkel]

Attention Team One: Potɑnsʉti is now officially up at the Akana wiki, although it is still a work in progress.
http://tzirtzi.ipage.com/akana/index.ph ... ns%CA%89ti

Hey, isn't that where I live?

[brandrinn]

Attention Team One: Potɑnsʉti is now officially up at the Akana wiki, although it is still a work in progress.
http://tzirtzi.ipage.com/akana/index.ph ... ns%CA%89ti

Hey, isn't that where I live?

I think you're just west of me.

When this image was posted, you said you wanted the coast just south of Rorshach. Note that my map is really zoomed in, so it looks like I cover more of the coast than I do.
Plus, I left lots of gaps, which you are free to fill.