Akana Conlang Relay 2011 (The Never Ending Relay)

[Pogostick Man]

If we want to repeat this (a Reconstruction Relay continued as a Derivation Relay) on a lesser scale (in which I'd be interested for I'm not sure yet if I can join at the very start), then we need two a priori protolanguages never made public previously, with the cultures behind them fitting a Neolithic setting.

Any candidates?

How much grammar and what size of a corpus would be required for one of these languages?

[the duke of nuke]

Theoretically we could do this with only four people, in two teams of two. But ideally we want more than two people per team.

By my count ten or eleven people have registered their interest on this thread, which is a good number.

The only problem was that some changes simply disappear. For example, last time out mother tongue started with laryngeals, and none of the daughters preserved them, with several of them dropping the phonemes without a trace. I tried to preserve the laryngeals indirectly through things like emphasis shifts, but the other team never found the hidden laryngeals. So each team needs to carefully make sure that the mother lnaguage can actually be retrieved from the collection of daughters.

I heartily agree with this. One thing that could help would be some level of correspondence between team members to ensure that at every significant feature has clues preserved in at least one language.

If we want to repeat this (a Reconstruction Relay continued as a Derivation Relay) on a lesser scale (in which I'd be interested for I'm not sure yet if I can join at the very start), then we need two a priori protolanguages never made public previously, with the cultures behind them fitting a Neolithic setting.

Any candidates?

If the game starts after mid-December - which is admittedly a while away! - I can draw one up to start. On the other hand, people may want to start before then.

How much grammar and what size of a corpus would be required for one of these languages?

Phonology and morphology, plus enough syntax to write a variety of sentences should do it, along with a short sample text or two (which should be used for the daughters too). Proto-Isles hasn't been changed substantially since the first relay, so the wiki pages for that should give a good idea of what to aim for.


We also need to decide on areas to work in. Southern Peilaš, Tuysáfa, and Zeluzhia are all good places to start off. But if anyone has a specific type of environment they'd like to use as a setting, we should get that decided earlyish.

[Herr Dunkel]

Well, arguably Akana is just a very slow relay of the second kind (derivation only), with the occasional quick burst like the efforts that have led to the Daiadak and Western families.

I'd say it's a Reconstruction Relay that mutated into a never-ending chain of Derivation Relays

If we want to repeat this (a Reconstruction Relay continued as a Derivation Relay) on a lesser scale (in which I'd be interested for I'm not sure yet if I can join at the very start), then we need two a priori protolanguages never made public previously, with the cultures behind them fitting a Neolithic setting.

Any candidates?

I'm currently making a Paleolithic/Neolithic conlang as we speak, so we can possibly use it for them pesky ancestors!

[treskro]

I'll try

[Herr Dunkel]

Wait, what will be our teams?
If anybody agrees, I'll use my WIP conlang as the protolang, but who will be in our team here to do changes?

[brandrinn]

OK, team time.

Option 1: Two teams of six people each.
Team 1: Caleone, Rorschach, cedh audmanh, Earthling, Dhokarena, treskro
Team 2: Darkgamma, the duke of nuke, caedes, brandrinn, Basilius, and the last slot will remain open for whoever is the next person to sign up

This would give each mother language six daughters. That's quite a lot. It would help the reconstruction, but it would also mean that each team would have to pour through a lot of data, some of which will inevitably be redundant. We could make three teams, with team 1 giving their results to team 2, who gives to team 3, who gives to team 1. But if nobody minds very much having six people on a team, then what say you we get started? If someone wants to make a protolanguage from scratch, that's fine. But we could just as soon use a previously made conlang, or a very obscure natlang if people promise not to google.

[WeepingElf]

I'm in. Give me the last slot in Team 2.

[Herr Dunkel]

OK, team time.

Option 1: Two teams of six people each.
Team 1: Caleone, Rorschach, cedh audmanh, Earthling, Dhokarena, treskro
Team 2: Darkgamma, the duke of nuke, caedes, brandrinn, Basilius, and the last slot will remain open for whoever is the next person to sign up

This would give each mother language six daughters. That's quite a lot. It would help the reconstruction, but it would also mean that each team would have to pour through a lot of data, some of which will inevitably be redundant. We could make three teams, with team 1 giving their results to team 2, who gives to team 3, who gives to team 1. But if nobody minds very much having six people on a team, then what say you we get started? If someone wants to make a protolanguage from scratch, that's fine. But we could just as soon use a previously made conlang, or a very obscure natlang if people promise not to google.

I don't mind a six-man team, and to prevent cheating, a made-from-scratch conlang is quite the best. My offer still stands.

[the duke of nuke]

Sounds all good to me so far, yeah

[communistplot]

I'm down with whatever I suppose. (:

[L'alphabētarium]

I'm intrigued... I want in too!

...a made-from-scratch conlang is quite the best.

I agree! Plus, we have to be really careful with this, no too much "creativity" to the proto-language and its daughters that might get them too far away from their mother.

I still have a few questions though... How many of us are there (including me), who's making the proto-lang and which are the teams and its members?

[dhok]

Oh, you worry too much. A little creativity is fine!

Anyways, shall I draw up a few potential phonologies tonight?

[communistplot]

Oh, you worry too much. A little creativity is fine!

Anyways, shall I draw up a few potential phonologies tonight?

Sounds good to me.

Would it be okay for teams to work together on the protolang or is it all the job of one person? :0

[brandrinn]

I think it would be better if it's the product of one person. And it needs to be done fairly quickly, before the teams become too enormous. So Dhokarena is doing the language for Team 1. Who will do the deed for team 2 (which now includes Weeping Elf, and maybe Lalpabetarium)?

[L'alphabētarium]

I think it would be better if it's the product of one person. And it needs to be done fairly quickly, before the teams become too enormous. So Dhokarena is doing the language for Team 1. Who will do the deed for team 2 (which now includes Weeping Elf, and maybe L'alphabētarium)?

I seriously consider myself unable to work on a proto-lang at this point. Now, a daughter is another subject.....

Anyways, shall I draw up a few potential phonologies tonight?

I say OK, but remember it's a proto-lang's phonology, it's supposed to look (and sound) rough, primitive and thrifty. So, no 8 different vowel sounds and 25 different consonants!

[Earthling]

I don't think having 8 vowels and 25 consonants has anything to do with a language being or not being a proto-language.
Proto-Indo-European has 25 consonants.

[dhok]

Alright, I'll do a phonology and morphology sketch and PM it to you guys tomorrow morning.

[the duke of nuke]

I think it would be better if it's the product of one person. And it needs to be done fairly quickly, before the teams become too enormous. So Dhokarena is doing the language for Team 1. Who will do the deed for team 2 (which now includes Weeping Elf, and maybe Lalpabetarium)?

I think Darkgamma was interested in doing one, which sounds good to me.

Any thoughts on areas (and time periods) to work in? I know we want the proto-languages to be Neolithic or thereabouts, but that still leaves a lot of flexibility.

[Pogostick Man]

What's the time depth supposed to be on the daughterlangs?

[brandrinn]

I would recommend 3000 years. That may seem like a lot, but it's less than the difference between English and Gaelic, or between Arabic and Coptic. Since we have plenty of daughters, that won't be a very wide time gap.

Two things:

-What else is going on in the world in the meantime?

Barbarian invasions, new types of metal or writing or advanced states. Each team will probably need to have a rough idea of what has happened over the last 3000 years.

-Do these languages have any intermediate forms?

Don't try to do 3000 years worth of sound changes at once. Figure out some intermediate steps. We may even want to have sub-families, maybe. At the very least, you need to know what kind of lifestyle your speakers have been living at various points in their history. A bit of geography would be helpful too, especially if the languages are going to have lots of loadwords.

So each team should make a simple map of the region, a brief timeline for the area, and very brief timelines for each daughter language.

[brandrinn]

This is just an example! Not intended to be a real thing.


Forests on the coast, then a mountain range, then a rain shadowy plateau.
3000 years ago, starting point: late neolithic
2000 years ago: bronze working enters the region from the north.
1000 years ago: first large scale states appear along the coast in the center of the map.
present day: late bronze age.
Some languages may drift to the west, where pastoralism is more attractive than farming. Others may move up the coast, where they will have better access to foreign trade routes. Others might stay near the center and develop advanced polities. Others might move south and maintain older ways of living.

This is the sort of thing we should have for each team before we get started. Anybody care to volunteer some creative ideas?

[Pogostick Man]

We may even want to have sub-families, maybe.

So we'd have half the team make an intermediate daughterlang and the other half makes another, and then the individuals on that team evolve further langs off of it, or something like that, then?

[the duke of nuke]

On the subject of location:

Here's a climate map for Akana, so people can choose areas that appeal: http://tzirtzi.ipage.com/akana/index.ph ... draft2.png

I'd suggest having one team start in the eastern half of Tuysáfa - it's a fair-sized continent, so there are plenty of places to choose from.
Here's a brief timeline for the history of Tuysáfa:

ca -15000: Primundic peoples, a mixed bag of Palaeolithic tribes, move to Tuysáfa from the west and start spreading throughout the continent
ca -8000: mesolithic Mediundic peoples move to Tuysáfa from the west
ca -5500: Mediundic cultures are dominant in most of the continent; agriculture develops around the Great Bay on the eastern coast
ca -3000: Pre-Wendoth spoken; agriculture is practiced as far west as the Ural-like mountains in the centre of the continent
ca -2500: agriculture adopted by the Pre-Wendoth people west of the mountains; metallurgy develops around the Great Bay; Pre-Proto-Anatolionesian peoples disperse from the Bay
ca -2000: Proto-Isles spoken (southwestern peninsula) and Wendoth spoken (western plains)
ca -1700: drought forces mass Wendoth migration away from the arid area west of the mountains; agriculture practiced in most areas of the continent
ca -1500: Proto-Isles diaspora - neolithic Isles people disperse from the southwest coast fleeing Wendoth invasions, Isles languages diverge
ca -500: Iron smelting begins on the islands east of Tuysáfa

Zeluzhia is also doable, but it has hardly any history laid out, and a slightly less interesting climate (mostly savannah and jungle).

ca -14000: first palaeolithic peoples settle in Zeluzhia
ca -1600: neolithic Isles peoples settle in northwestern Zeluzhia, bringing rainfall agriculture
-224: Zeluzh founded
ca 100: Zele spoken (northwest coast)
ca 500: Kiizwaye spoken (northwestern mountains)
ca 1500: Jamna Kopiai and Tipatirápai spoken (northwest central savannah)

I don't know so much about southern Peilaš, but the east-central part of the continent (north of that huge gulf) is the location of the Xšali Empire, which has agriculture at least as early as -4000, and speaks a click language of the !Ho family. The tropical areas are virtually undescribed.

As for time depth, the original relay had a length of 2000 years (roughly the years -1900 to 100) - anything from 2000 to 3000 should be fine. If we start around the year -2500 and run from there to about the year 500, that will give us plenty to play with; it coincides with early agriculture in Tuysáfa, and means that people can have languages interacting with ones already described on the wiki.


PS. I'm quite happy with the idea of sub-families, though they won't help with reconstruction if the first-generation daughter is available.

[Herr Dunkel]

I think Darkgamma was interested in doing one, which sounds good to me.

Darkgamma is actually making a conlang as of now, and for all of you that complain about 25 consonants, it has 42 and a near-horizontal vowel system
I can just change its place of origin and voila! new protolang WIP

[L'alphabētarium]

I think Darkgamma was interested in doing one, which sounds good to me.

Darkgamma is actually making a conlang as of now, and for all of you that complain about 25 consonants, it has 42 and a near-horizontal vowel system
I can just change its place of origin and voila! new protolang WIP

I can give in to the idea of 42 consonants (we don't have to go from small to big, we can do it the other way around), but that "near-horizontal vowel system" sounds scary to me...