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

[Pole, the]

Regarding Mbingmik, there indeed is some lexicon, as I PM-ed Cech on the other forum so I was able to include various loans from Proto-Mbingmik in Kopoıves.

[Cedh]

Regarding Mbingmik, there indeed is some lexicon, as I PM-ed Cech on the other forum so I was able to include various loans from Proto-Mbingmik in Kopoıves.

Proto-Mbingmik itself was spoken closer to the western end of the mountain range, [...] but speakers of the daughterlanguages probably moved east relatively early after crossing the mountains, and maybe one or two groups even moved east on the northern side of the mountains (the Wendoth invasion came from a northeastern direction, not from straight east). [...]

I haven't done any definite work on the descendants of Proto-Mbingmik yet. There are a few phonologies I'd like to use (mostly developing towards a smaller phoneme inventory and fewer coda consonants), but no sound changes yet to get there. Grammatically, a majority of the descendants would probably evolve towards a more agglutinative morphosyntax (mostly prefixing), and the derivational system would tend to become fossilized. [...]

Also, here's the WIP lexicon for Proto-Mbingmik as it currently stands, at 384 words:

Code: Select all

baem             v.       admire
  > kbaem        v.stat   be impressive
bao              pron.    1sg.nom pronoun
bəńjee           v.       sigh, moan
boap             n.a      jaw
chaa             v.       fry
chaay            n.a      dog
  > chkaay       n.a      large dog; alpha dog (in a pack)
chaoŋ            v.stat   be young
  > chrəmaoŋ     n.i      youth, childhood
chɛŋ             n.i      left side
chmoo            v.stat   happen in the same timeframe; ~ 'when'
chnaŋ            n.i      pot
chŋaay           v.stat   far, distant
  > caʔŋaay      n.i      distance
chpuŋ            v.       inhale, breathe
chrean           qu.      much, many
chruoŋ           v.       cross
chuu             v.       succeed; accomplish
  > chnuu        v.stat   be successful
chuʔ             n.mass   foreigners (back-formed from *mənchuʔ)
  > mənchuʔ      n.h      village (of a foreign people) (< PIsl. míntzuq 'clan')
cieh             v.       fall
cieŋ             n.i      bone
cik              v.       dig
cuok             n.a      sky
cuol             v.stat   be acquainted with
  > cuńcuol      n.h      acquaintance
cuom             n.h      person
cuoŋ             v.       tie; tighten
  > chluoŋ       n.a      rope
cut              v.       exceed
cuup             v.       hear
  > cəcuup       v.       know, understand
  > chnucuup     v.stat   be wise
  > cuŋcuup      v.       teach
deek             v.       lie down
din              pron.    this (here)
diŋ              n.h      family
  > diliŋ        v.stat   be related to
doay             v.stat   by, with, due to, because of
dum              pron.    1sg.dat pronoun
duoh             pron.    1sg.acc pronoun
duy              n.a      sea, ocean (< PIsl. dúy)
əmao             v.       hit
əmɛɛ             v.       hold; bring
  > muymɛɛ       v.stat   be carried; result from
əŋgii            v.       smile, enjoy oneself, be delighted
əpwan            n.a      forest
hae              adv.     already
hɛɛt             v.stat   be distinct
  > phɛɛt        n.a      type, kind, species
heam             n.i      side, edge, boundary
hep              n.i      box
həkaay           n.i      mountain
  > həhkaay      n.i      mountain range
  > hilkaay      v.stat   high; steep
həmnaʔ           n.i      cliff (< PIsl. hámnaq)
həŋgwəy          v.stat   be strong
hmao             n.i      grass; hay
hmin             v.stat   be large
hŋiem            v.stat   be silent, be quiet
hrap             v.       die, fade, wilt
hrie             v.stat   be red, be colorful
keat             v.       rise
  > khreat       v.       raise, lift from the ground
kha              pron.    3sg.f.abs.fam pronoun
khaam            n.i      nut (< PIsl. kukamh 'nuts (pl.)', reanalysed as reduplicated)
khae             cj.      but
khea             n.a      earth, soil, ground
kheaŋ            v.       use
  > kamneaŋ      v.stat   be useful, be suitable
  > khreaŋ       v.       prepare
khen             v.       see
  > khtyen       n.h      guard
kheń             n.a      tail
khəy             v.stat   rest, stay, wait
khic             n.a      blood
  > khnic        v.       shed blood
khiew            n.h      man
  > cəkhiew      n.h      group (of men)
khiey            v.stat   be dry
  > khrəmiey     n.i      drought
khluo            n.h      people, tribe, ethnicity
  > məŋkhluo     n.h      fellow tribesman
khməy            v.stat   be brave
khmuun           v.stat   happy, content
  > kaʔmuun      n.i      happiness
khnae            n.a      claw; blade
  > kilnae       v.stat   sharp; deadly
khpen            n.a      armpit, back of knee
khral            n.a      moon
khreal           v.       sing
khruc            v.stat   be angry
  > kathruc      n.a      anger, fury
khruʔ            v.       grow; derive from
khtɛɛm           n.a      tongue
khuy             v.stat   be small
kɨəh             adv.     and then, next, subsequently
ksac             n.i      sand
ksɔɔ             pron.    3sg.i.abs pronoun
ksuk             v.       kill
kuom             v.       support
kuuc             n.a      fog, mist
  > kyuuc        v.       obscure, hide from view
kuuy             v.       do
  > kəkuuy       v.       repeat, do sth. over and over
kwaaʔ            v.       get, obtain
kwaʔ             v.stat   blind
kwəy             n.i      cloth
kwip             v.       make, create
  > kukwip       v.       work intensively on sth.; refine, improve
  > khlɨɨp       n.a      tool
kyao             n.h      grandparent
kyɔm             v.       dwell
kyul             n.a      wind, air
laaw             v.stat   be ashamed, be embarrassed
  > ləlaaw       v.       do something stupid, make a mistake
  > luŋaaw       v.       expose, play a trick on sb., cause sb. to make a fool of themselves
  > phlaaw       n.i      blunder, faux pas
lɛʔ              pron.    reflexive pronoun ('-self')
leec             n.a      fire
  > ləndeec      v.       burn (intentionally); perform fire sacrifice
  > sleec        n.a      flame
lep              v.stat   be near
ləh              pron.    contrastive pronoun ('the other one')
ləkat            v.stat   be dead
ləkɔɔw           n.h      older sister
ləmbrik          v.       wake up
liet             v.stat   be forced to move
  > ləliet       v.stat   tremble
lieʔ             v.stat   be white, be bright
liiń             v.       turn, revolve
  > khliiń       v.stat   be busy; continue
liiw             n.h      child
mae              n.i      boat (< PIsl. máyh)
  > cumae        n.h      boat traveller
mal              v.       feel, sense, know intuitively
  > mamnal       v.stat   be alert, be watchful
mao              n.h      mother
mbaay            v.       say (privately), confide
  > mbamnaay     v.stat   be an intimate friend of; trust
  > mumbaay      v.       listen to someone's worries
  > mimbaay      v.       whisper
  > kəmbaay      v.stat   be secret, be confidential
  > mburaay      n.i      secret
mbak             v.       go, walk
mbao             n.a      fish
mbəmuy           n.i      meal
mbəthum          v.       lick
mbiim            n.h      woman
  > mbəmbiim     n.h      group (of women)
mbream           n.a      finger
  > mbəsream     v.       point at sth.
mbriw            v.       be polite, show respect to
  > mbuŋgriw     v.stat   be superior, be of high rank
  > mbəmbriw     v.stat   have good manners
  > mbathriw     n.i      politeness, respect
  > pəmbriw      n.i      gesture of goodwill, small favor
  > nəmbriw      adv.     politely
mbrəw            n.i      horn
mbrəy            v.       move away from, leave, abandon
men              qu.      one
məw              par.     (case particle: dative-benefactive)
mieŋ             n.h      aunt (mother's sister or cousin or sister-in-law)
miew             v.stat   be rotten
mpaeŋ            n.a      skin
muop             v.       make sth. turn into sth.
muoh             n.a      insect
muu              v.       wrap, roll up
  > pəmuu        n.i      roll, bundle, package
myun             pron.    2sg.acc.fam pronoun
myuuk            v.       form, shape, create
  > muʔmyuuk     v.stat   resemble, be shaped like
naay             n.a      mouth
  > nisaay       v.       whisper; notify
nal              v.       forecast, predict
  > bənal        n.a      omen
ndae             n.h      aunt (father's sister or cousin or sister-in-law)
ndaʔ             n.i      cliff; edge
ndɛk             v.stat   sit; be located
  > ndrəmɛk      n.i      position, place, situation, posture, stance (lit. 'state of sitting')
ndɛp             n.a      hip
ndek             n.a      eye
ndeʔ             v.stat   be behind, be after
ndiŋ             v.       say (in a normal conversation)
  > ndəndiŋ      v.       babble, talk too much
  > ndrəmiŋ      n.i      conversation
  > nduriŋ       n.i      topic
ndɨɨʔ            v.       find, discover
ndliiŋ           v.       remember
  > ndəŋgliiŋ    n.i      memory; myth
ndluo            n.a      star
ndrɛŋ            n.h      sibling, cousin
  > ndrɛŋ-ndrɛŋ  n.h      all one's relatives
  > mindrɛŋ      n.h      youngest brother or sister, nesthäkchen
niiŋ             pron.    2sg.m.nom.fgn pronoun
nuk              v.       reach, arrive at
  > ndluk        n.i      path, way
nuŋ              v.       know (facts)
ńɛɛ              v.stat   agree with, be of the same opinion as, be in concord with
  > nindyɛɛ      v.       convince, persuade, win sb. over
  > nilɛɛ        v.stat   be in negotiation with
  > nińɛɛ        v.stat   side with, support sb's cause
  > khńɛɛ        v.stat   be similar to
  > kuńɛɛ        v.stat   disagree with, clash with, be at odds with
  > nimɛɛ        n.i      agreement, concord
  > niŋkɛɛ       n.i      peace
ńe               cj.      and
ńjal             v.       slap
  > ńjəńjal      v.       flap the wings
ńjənao           v.       call, scream
ńjul             n.a      needle
  > ńjisul       v.       sew; make clothes
  > ńjəkul       n.a      spear
ŋgak             v.stat   be alive
ŋgəmaay          n.i      hammock (< PIsl. gawmay kupim 'flying bed')
ŋgəw             pron.    that (far away)
ŋgəy             n.a      head
ŋgiek            v.stat   be to the west
  > ŋgriek       v.       go westwards
ŋgiik            v.stat   be within
  > ńjəŋgiik     v.stat   be in the middle of
ŋgrae            n.i      stick
ŋgoah            v.       jump
ŋgut             n.h      uncle (mother's brother or cousin or brother-in-law)
ŋgwɛt            v.       take
ŋgween           v.       eat
ŋgwɔl            n.a      beard
ŋgyap            v.       experience, come across, undergo, survive (subject takes dative)
ŋədiim           v.stat   be weak
  > ŋgrəndiim    n.i      weakness, flaw
ŋim              v.       die
  > ŋglim        v.       be dying
ŋkwaon           v.       help
ŋteah            n.a      promise, pledge, vow, oath
  > ŋənteah      v.       make a promise, swear
  > ŋtieh        v.       rely on sb.
pəkhrəy          v.stat   be to the south
  > prəkhrəy     v.       go southwards
pha              pron.    3sg.m.abs.fam pronoun
phan             n.a      heart
phań             v.       put, place
phao             v.       might have; would not (< PIsl. -pawh 'subjunctive/irrealis')
phean            qu.      all
phkaa            n.a      flower
phiel            v.       look, see
phim             n.i      maple (< PIsl. pím)
phiʔ             v.       come; approach
  > puŋhiʔ       v.       summon
phnae            v.       send
phnum            n.i      mountain
phnuʔ            n.i      basket (< PIsl. punuq)
phŋuk            n.a      hand
phŋuut           v.       bathe, wash (tr.)
phɔk             v.       drink
phraʔ            v.stat   be under
phrɛʔ            v.       sleep
phrəw            n.i      path, way
  > pəndrəw      v.       clear the way; establish a trade route
phrəw            v.       know (people); be friends with
  > pəngrəw      n.a      friendship
phrəy            n.h      married couple
  > psərəy       n.h      spouse
  > phriəy       v.       marry
phum             n.a      ear
pieh             v.       remove, take away
psaeŋ            v.stat   different
puoh             v.stat   be to the east
  > phruoh       v.       go eastwards
puol             v.       lift, carry
pyuu             v.       suspend
reeŋ             v.       block, obstruct
  > bareeŋ       n.a      wall, fence, shield
rep              qu.      few
rəngɔɔ           v.stat   be connected to
  > rəŋgaʔ       pron.    1pl.excl.nom pronoun
riem             v.       give
  > muʔriem      v.       receive
riep             v.stat   be black, be dark
  > rəndiep      v.       paint (in dark colors)
riet             v.       knead
rɨɨk             v.       fight
  > ruŋɨɨk       v.       provoke
  > khrɨɨk       v.       be an enemy of
  > rənuuk       v.       be aggressive
  > ratɨɨk       n.a      war
  > cumrɨɨk      n.h      warrior
ruoŋ             n.a      knee, elbow, shoulder, heel
saa              v.       finish, get done with, fulfill
sac              v.       laugh
sbak             n.a      face; front
sɛk              v.stat   be more
seaʔ             n.a      water
siim             v.       happen, occur
  > sŋiim        n.a      action, event, occasion, circumstances
  > sriim        v.       cause, instigate
siiw             v.stat   take (a time); span (a length)
  > satiiw       n.i      duration; length
sɨp              qu.      many
sɔɔk             v.       break, fall apart
suot             v.stat   do sth. for the benefit of
sun              pron.    2sg.nom.fam pronoun
suu              v.stat   exist, be true
  > srəmuu       n.i      truth
suʔ              v.       say publicly, announce, declare
  > sluʔ         v.stat   want to say something, wait impatiently for one's turn in a conversation
  > samnuʔ       v.stat   be well-known
  > səsuʔ        v.       issue a law, deliver a judgement
  > psuʔ         n.i      announcement, declaration
  > styuʔ        n.h      orator; herald
sweec            n.a      neck
taeń             v.stat   be torn into pieces
  > phtaeń       n.i      rags, tattered garments
tɛɛ              pron.    3sg.a.abs pronoun
tean             v.       give (also used as a causative auxiliary verb; causee takes dative)
  > thnuon       v.       provide, offer
thae             n.h      father
thak             v.stat   worthless, unsuitable, defunct
thaŋ             cj.      if
thaem            n.i      chickpea (< PIsl. tawyimh)
thɛɛc            n.i      root
thɛʔ             pron.    1sg.poss pronoun
thiim            v.stat   be strong, be healthy
thɨŋ             n.a      river
thkiʔ            n.h      older brother
thməń            n.a      tooth
thməy            v.stat   new
  > thrəməy      v.       repair, polish
thnɔm            n.i      medicine
  > təsnɔm       v.       treat a disease with medicinal herbs
thŋaay           n.a      day; sun
  > tiŋaay       v.stat   bright, well-lit
  > ndəthŋaay    n.a      the next day
  > uthŋaay      n.a      the previous day
threaʔ           v.       be lost
tien             n.a      flame, spark
  > thnien       v.       light a fire
təphao           v.stat   be to the north
  > trəphao      v.       go northwards
tɨŋ              v.stat   be taut
tɨʔ              par.     (case particle: ablative)
tuoy             n.a      sun
  > mtuoy        n.a      torch
tuŋ              v.       want, wish
twań             v.       weave
twɛɛ             n.i      gate, entrance
  > thkwɛɛ       n.i      main gate (of a house or village)
tyaaŋ            v.       meet, visit, attend
  > thrəyaaŋ     v.       arrange a meeting
  > təlyaaŋ      v.       host (guests)
  > tityaaŋ      v.       meet regularly, know sb. very well
  > tintyaaŋ     n.i      meeting
  > cuntyaaŋ     n.h      guest, visitor, the person who one wants to meet
tyak             v.stat   be flat
  > tuŋyak       v.       flatten
tyuuŋ            v.stat   black, dark
θəy              par.     (case particle: agentive)
θɔɔ              n.h      uncle (father's brother or cousin or brother-in-law)
θwɔɔń            v.stat   love
  > hlɔɔń        v.       fall in love
  > hrəwɔɔń      v.       flirt, tease
  > kswɔɔń       v.stat   be popular
  > miθwɔɔń      v.stat   like, be attracted to
vɨɨ              pron.    that (nearby)
wɛc              v.       try
wənthiin         n.a      garden, orchard (< PIsl. wíntinq)
yɛɛ              pron.    anaphoric pronoun ('the same one')
yeam             n.a      nose
yəthao           v.stat   be above
yəw              v.       want, desire
  > yamnəw       v.stat   be desirable
yɔɔk             v.       follow
  > cumyɔɔk      n.h      guide, scout
yuk              n.a      arm, leg
yuun             v.       drink
ʔak              par.     (case particle: accusative/patientive)
ʔiek             qu.      two
ʔiŋ              adv.     (past tense marker)
ʔɨɨy             n.a      foot

I'll post this on the wiki soon. Loanwords from Proto-Isles are indicated; most of the other roots were made with correspondences to Pre-Wendoth in mind.

[CatDoom]

Nice! I'd love to hear more about your efforts to link Ronquian and Mbingmik (somewhere private, of course). I've been fiddling with something similar myself, off and on.

[TriceraTiger]

I don't know if it is really my place to ask this, but could Dumic instead represent an early outgroup from the other Pan-Tuysafan tongues? As in, all the other clades are closer related to each other than any single one is to Dumic? Maybe that's one way to explain away the weird geographic distribution.

[Cedh]

I don't know if it is really my place to ask this, but could Dumic instead represent an early outgroup from the other Pan-Tuysafan tongues? As in, all the other clades are closer related to each other than any single one is to Dumic? Maybe that's one way to explain away the weird geographic distribution.

That's my opinion on this topic too. It also seems to be supported by the fact that Proto-Dumic is quite thoroughly head-final, whereas the other families all have much more varied word orders which tend to be head-initial rather than head-final. But I think we can say anything definitive about the structure of the macro-family only after the original Proto-Leic and Proto-Ronquian grammars will have been made public.

[Pole, the]

Is the Wendoth diachronics page still accurate?

[Cedh]

That's a work-in-progress page by Alces, but I don't think he ever developed a language out of that. (There's also this page, which uses yet another series of sound changes.)

I'm not sure whether CatDoom's Yèwèdu starts off with the changes to any of those groups, but he can surely tell you.

[CatDoom]

Is the Wendoth diachronics page still accurate?

That's a work-in-progress page by Alces, but I don't think he ever developed a language out of that. (There's also this page, which uses yet another series of sound changes.)

I'm not sure whether CatDoom's Yèwèdu starts off with the changes to any of those groups, but he can surely tell you.

Embarrassingly, I wasn't aware of that first document; I had only seen the draft in the second one. I had initially modeled what became Yèwèdu fairly closely on Alces' draft of Ajeddos, but there were several sound changes I ended up being somewhat unhappy with. I wanted to retain (part of) the Wendoth phonation distinction as a parallel with the two tones in Rrób Tè Jĕhnò (and possibly more distantly with the register system of Mhakh Thandim), and after doing more research on geminate consonants it made more sense to me that they geminate after stressed syllables, rather than before them. I also shifted gemination such that it occurs before words become uniformly stressed on the final syllable, which felt like it helped justify the change (which is now similar to the way that proto-Germanic gained phonemic voiced fricatives). Once I'd made those changes, I figured I might as well go in a different direction all together.

Yèwèdu does, however, share several sound changes with Alces' proposed daughter:

*Both languages are descended from dialects of Wendoth in which <h> is /ɦ/, rather than /ʁ/
*Both languages shift Wendoth ə and (some instances of) a to ɛ
*Both languages shift Wendoth [nd] to [dd], though Yèwèdu extends this to [ŋg] as well
*Both languages elide "unmarked" penultimate vowels (this affects modally voiced vowels in Bweddos and short vowels in Yèwèdu)

Looking at the first document, it appears that all of Alces' proposed daughter families unpack breathy and creaky vowels, getting rid of the phonation distinction or shifting it to adjacent consonants, so Yèwèdu can't fit neatly into any of them. Ajeddos seems most closely aligned with Proto-Northwestern Wendoth. Proto-Northern Wendoth has a chain shift that resembles the one in Yèwèdu, and seems to be geographically situated in the right area to be the direct ancestor of my language, but the "peripheral Wendoth" languages seem to be the ones more likely to keep the phionation distinction.

I'm tempted to make some modifications to Yèwèdu to bring it roughly in line with southeastern Wendoth, and suggest a northward migration toward the coast, possibly facilitated by the introduction of bronze weaponry, which arrives roughly from the southeast (though I'm not sure how well this would work in the timeline we're developing). The features it has in common with northern Wendoth varieties would be the product of subsequent language contact. On the other hand, Yèwèdu could simply represent an isolate within the Wendoth family, standing alone as a sixth branch of the family. In any case, it's similarities to other branches could be explained by viewing its history in terms of a wave model, rather than a strict phylogenic tree.

[Cedh]

(BTW, it's strictly speaking not necessary that the Wendoth family is really structured in the way Alces proposed - as long as the suggested languages haven't been decribed, the sound change lists can of course be changed. So both of you are free to make up a Wendoth branch independent of Alces' proposals.)

[CatDoom]

So here's something I've been tinkering with for a little while: a map that tries to rationalize the various regional maps on the wiki and show the general distribution of language families in Peliaš circa 1 YP:

http://i.imgur.com/rejr7dk.jpg


Here's a basic overview; note that this is a super rough first draft, and probably has many glaring errors:

*The monstrous purple blob of course represents the Western Language family. This is probably something of a high-water mark for the distribution of the Western languages, since by this point the areas south of the Tjakori plateau and possibly the plateau itself are already under the control of the Third Xšali Empire. I'm presuming that the region is still primarily western-speaking for now, since most of it has at this point been under Xšali control for less than a century.

In the west I favored the -500 YP Lukpanic Coast map over the animated map showing the spread of the Western languages, at least with regard to the area immediately to the north of the Lukpanic Coast, and left it blank as a region of uncertain (and probably diverse) linguistic affiliation.

*The dark blue in the far west of the Lukpanic coast represents the area where Lukpanic languages are still spoken (not including an island to the southeast that doesn't seem to appear on the base map I used). Based on the statement that Isi was the last of the Lukpanic city-states to fall to Western Speakers, I'm assuming that the Lukpanic languages did not recede significantly after -500 YP.

*The orange color in and immediately around Xšalad represents the !Ho languages, though They may extend further southwest into the interior of southern Peliaš. I have taken the liberty of extending the family east of Xšalad, based on a statement on the Wiki that some languages related to Xšali are spoken to the east of the empire.

*The yellow area represents the Hitatc languages, whose distribution distribution remains more or less stable, as far as I can tell, between around -2000 YP and a few centuries after the time period represented in the map.

*The dark green areas represent the Peninsular family, though I've left their distribution on and around the peninsula more or less unchanged from the -2000 YP map.

*The dark red north of the peninsula and the brighter red in the Isthmus and Siixtaguna represents the two suviving branches of the Eigə-Isthmus Family, with Miwan in the south and Isthmus in the north. A lot of the territory I gave to the Isthmus family is speculation on my part; for the sake of this map, I made the assumption that the first areas of northern Siixtaguna absorbed by the Kennan were areas that were culturally and linguistically similar, speaking related Isthmus languages. Then I assigned the Isthmus family the western coast of the subcontinent based on the hypothesis that the Kennan and neighboring peoples were descended from Isthmus-speakers who had migrated to northern Siixtaguna along the coast.

*The light blue area in the center of the map naturally represents the descendants of Ndak-Ta, while the darker blue area to their immediate northwest represents the other Talo-Edastian languages. The very light blue area between the Western and Talo-Edastian spheres represents the Xoronic languages, based on the assumption that the Meshi had been entirely assimilated into Habeo culture by 1 YP.

*The light green along the coast of Siixtaguna represents the Nualis-Takuña languages, though I wasn't certain exactly how far northward and inland they extended.

*The yellow-orange color in between Peliaš and Tuysáfa naturally represents the isles languages.

*The dull gold color in western Tuysáfa represents the decendants of Wendoth, while the dark brown area represents the Mbingmik languages.


In general I tried to use natural features to define the boundaries of language groups when they weren't already depicted on a map using the same base map that I used. Let me know what you think! I'd love to make this as accurate as possible.

Edit: Also, I'm not sure where to put Dimana Lokud in the western mountains, and the boundaries I set for the western languages in that general area are pretty arbitrary.

[Arzena]

Awesome map CatDoom

With regards to the southern extant of the Western languages, it seems like Xšali will spread back up towards Tjakori (going by the histories of the Empire of Athale and Xšalad). Or maybe not; Western speakers could remain a nice buffer between Athale and Xšalad, with alternating loyalties between the northern and the southern empires.

I always envisioned the speakers of Shtasa to become an isolated, mountainous bunch after their height of glory between the Second and Third Empires of Xšalad. Unfortunately, I don't think Radius ever put out substantial vocab lists or grammar sketches of Xšali for me to make a Xšali-infused Western lang.

[CatDoom]

I agree with you about Xšali expanding northward, I'm just assuming that it's a process that still in its relatively early stages at the time of this map. I could add cross-hatching or something to indicate the transition underway.

[caedes]

Looks awesome!

[CatDoom]

Looks awesome!

Thanks! I can't take much credit, though; it's based more or less entirely on other people's work. The physical underlay map is by Pocketful of Songs, and the cultural information comes mostly from a bunch of maps by Cedh, Pocketful of Songs, TheDukeofNuke, Arzena, and The Devilcat. I mostly just tried to reconcile all the different maps and extrapolated based on information available on the Wiki.

[Cedh]

The map looks very good indeed! Great work! Here are some comments I want to make:

- First of all, pocketful's base map is great in many regards, but it contains some errors because it was based on an out-of-date idea of where some of the mountain ranges should go. In particular, there should be a minor north-to-south mountain range along the western coast (because otherwise the Western steppe would receive too much rain to be a steppe) rather than the west-to-east range north of the Lukpanic cities, and the relatively high Šišin mountains should continue east all along the southern coast of Siixtaguna to the eastern tip of Tymytỳs. Both of these might make some difference regarding the exact distribution of language families in the respective areas.

*The orange color in and immediately around Xšalad represents the !Ho languages, though they may extend further southwest into the interior of southern Peliaš. I have taken the liberty of extending the family east of Xšalad, based on a statement on the Wiki that some languages related to Xšali are spoken to the east of the empire.

I've been thinking that Xšali alone would cover almost all of the orange area, and that the related languages you mention would be spoken in the currently white area further east.

*The yellow area represents the Hitatc languages, whose distribution distribution remains more or less stable, as far as I can tell, between around -2000 YP and a few centuries after the time period represented in the map.

Yes - but I think the eastern third or so of the yellow area, especially the southeast, should be Miwan-speaking instead. However, there are also some isolated Hitatc speakers at the coast, at the mouth of the Şepamã river which forms the northern border of Peninsular territory.

The very light blue area between the Western and Talo-Edastian spheres represents the Xoronic languages, based on the assumption that the Meshi had been entirely assimilated into Habeo culture by 1 YP.

A variant of Meshi is still spoken even 1000 years later than that, along and east of the Meshi river which meets the Eigə from the north, right next to the first A of the word "Aiwa" on the map. It's very well possible that the region of Habeo dominance extends through most of the area marked in light blue, but there should be a stable pocket of Meshi speakers somewhere, possibly along the upper reaches of their river.

*The light green along the coast of Siixtaguna represents the Nualis-Takuña languages, though I wasn't certain exactly how far northward and inland they extended.

In the south it looks good to me (because of the mountains I mentioned earlier), but I think it's quite likely that some of the northeastern Nu-Tak groups would have spread inland along the river which meets the sea just south of Kennan territory. Also, Núalís itself is spoken on Tymytỳs, and I think most of the Tymytỳs archipelago would actually be dominated by Nu-Tak languages, with Máotatšàlì covering only a significant portion of Tymytỳs island.

*The yellow-orange color in between Peliaš and Tuysáfa naturally represents the isles languages.

- Most of the islands in the Ttiruku Arc are highly diverse linguistically, especially in the east. Ttiruku itself is supposed to host about a hundred languages from a dozen families or so, similar to New Guinea in our world. Only in parts of Šumarušuxi have Isles speakers been able to completely displace languages from other families.
- I've imagined Zeluzh to be further west (i.e. above the letters "ZELU").
- The currently empty island between Ttiruku and Tymytỳs is probably Isles-speaking as well.

Edit: Also, I'm not sure where to put Dimana Lokud in the western mountains, and the boundaries I set for the western languages in that general area are pretty arbitrary.

I'd say Dimana Lokud is probably spoken in the region just northeast of the words "western steppe". I would also draw the eastern boundary of the Western family slightly differently: As I see it, whole Western tribes crossed the mountains only three times: first the Tjakori/Gezoro branch (at the plateau), then pre-Shtåså (also at the plateau), then pre-Ayčasamo (northeast of the Wañelín). The Tjakori/Gezoro/Shtåså and Ayčasamo areas probably shouldn't be contiguous; I think that the higher northwestern reaches of the Tjakori watershed might be a refuge for a few older languages, and the higher southwestern reaches of the Eigə watershed would be Habeo-speaking.

And finally I'd like to correct what seems to be a persistent typo: the name of the continent is Peilaš /ˈpelaʃ/ (with <i> coming before <l>), from Fáralo pei ‘big, large’ and laš ‘land’.

[CatDoom]

Thanks a ton for the feadback! I'm working to incorporate your suggestions, but I'm not so sure about expanding the !Ho languages further east, since the description page for Xšalad describes "numerous languages unrelated to !Ho or Peninsular" between the !Ho and Peninsular languages.

[CatDoom]

Here's a second draft, incorporating Cedh's suggestions: http://i.imgur.com/ZxpyROq.jpg.

I added an isles-speaking area south of Zeluzh, to represent the Kiizwaye, and changed the color of the !Ho languages to make it more distinct from the Isles family. Dimana Lokud (or, rather, descendant(s) thereof) is represented in pink. The light blue area north of the Meshi (the dark red area of northern Xōron Eiel is meant to represent Damak; the Habeo languages are spoken to the south and southwest.

I'm curious about what others think of the distribution I've assigned to the isles and non-isles languages on the islands. Mostly I went by topography, with the isles languages extending to higher elevations in the west than it does in the east. I also assumed that the population of non-isles speakers was densest around rivers, and I generally left them in control of more riverside territory than the isles speakers.

[Cedh]

Anyone going to the next Language Creation Conference (LCC6), which takes place on April 25th-26th in Horsham, UK (south of London)? I'll be there, and I'd love to meet other Akana contributors on the occasion...

[the duke of nuke]

I'd love to come, but I'm afraid I'm already booked up on that date!

[Alces]

Firstly, does anybody know if Alces is still around? He has the beginnings of a Wendoth daughter langauge posted to the wiki, though it looks like it's been years since he worked on it. I was just curious to know if he had any unpublished notes/general thoughts about the Wendoth family beyond what's on the wiki.

I'm still here! Well, I have been away for years, having not done any conlanging since 2012, so I haven't been keeping track of anything that's going on with Akana. But I took a notion to have a look at it just last week, and it seems I've got into it again... It's great that Túysafa is being developed further, and it's very nice to see Proto-Mbingmik and Yewedu! Having reread the page on Wendoth I wrote 5 years ago, I've noticed that there are some confusing and inconsistent parts in it, so I'm currently trying to rewrite the page and clarify things. But I will keep the actual content of the language unchanged so it doesn't mess up the correspondances with Proto-Mbingmik and Yewedu. I need to update the lexicon too, because it seems to be missing a lot of words that are mentioned on the main page. And, I've given Pre-Wendoth a page of its own. I did have a sketch of the language saved on my computer, which I never put up on the wiki, but unfortunately I never transferred it over to my current computer. So I've tried to write down what I can remember about the language on that page (and I've tried to reconstruct the parts I don't remember).

Cedh, do you have a list of the correspondances between Pre-Wendoth and Proto-Mbingmik somewhere? I have noticed a few already, like mb with f, ch and c with s, kh with k, g and x. It might be useful to know them if I want to add new words to the Wendoth lexicon, because then I can make some of them cognate with Proto-Mbingmik words.

About the Wendoth/Diachronics page, I had completely forgotten it existed, so I'm not bothered if the descendants of Wendoth end up developing in a completely different way compared to what I suggested on that page; you can consider it obsolete. I did, just a few days ago, draw up a tentative map of the geographic spread of the family (warning: it's not a very pretty map):



The red area is the Urheimat, the dotted lines show the boundaries between three top-level divisions (which I've been thinking of as North Wendoth, East Wendoth and South Wendoth), and the other lines show the extent of the family's range (the inner one at -1500 YP, the outer one at some later time, maybe 0 YP?). The labels each correspond to a different language at the later time. I made this map before I noticed that Yewedu and the Ronquian/Leic families existed, so it might need to be adjusted to fit them in, and of course I'm not bothered if the details need to be changed.

I haven't thought much about the linguistic development of the family. I was thinking of putting my draft descendant, Ajeddos, into the North Wendoth subgroup, so other languages in that subgroup would probably have some similarities with Ajeddos, evolving an obscenely large consonant inventory, etc. But the East Wendoth and South Wendoth subgroups could develop any way

[Pole, the]

Wonderfully.

By the way, I have done some fiddling with the two families and also found some corrensopndences. Unfortunately, I haven't got the file on the computer where I am living now.

(I also made some hypotheses, e.g. about the Proto-Mbi-Wen having different series in non-dorsal stops (think /b d/ vs /p t/ vs /mp nt/ or so) and dorsal ones (think /c k/ vs /ch kh/ or so).)

[CatDoom]

Thanks Alces; I'm a little embarrassed I didn't notice your reply! I actually rather like that map; very dense but not entirely unreadable. My Wendoth descendant, Yewedu, would be located in the area currently labelled as "NW3," though I based the initial changes on what you had laid out for "proto-southeastern-Wendoth." I've never been entirely happy with some of the sound changes, though; I'm not sure how likely it is for glottal stops to become other kinds of stops through assimilation, and it seems a bit odd that the language loses breathy voice on vowels only to get it back not long afterward. Would it be alright with you if I laid claim to proto-Eastern Wendoth, and extend the sub-family a bit farther north in order to suit my purposes?

[Alces]

That's fine with me

I've drawn up some notes on two more Wendoth descendants now as well:

• Hỳng, a language spoken in the southeast part of the EW area, close to Wihəs (with some nice developments like p_G > k, t_G > t_w > p and ts > tT > tf; I had fun writing the sound changes for this one )
• and Mboroth, which is just a set of correspondances at the moment, which I haven't put on the wiki yet. But this will be spoken on the southwestern peninsula where Proto-Isles was spoken.

Mboroth will probably be one of the South Wendoth languages, while Hỳng is an outlier which doesn't fall into any of the three branches. So I think the Wendoth family tree will look something like this:

Code: Select all

Wendoth
.. Hỳng
.. East Wendoth (now covering an area extending further to the north)
.... Yewedu
.. North Wendoth
.... (Ajeddos) (it will probably end up having a different name)
.. South Wendoth
.... Mboroth

I have also revamped the Wendoth phonology and morphology sections more or less to my satisfaction now. Syntax and the lexicon should be updated soon as well. I added a new text too, which might be a fun one to translate into other languages

[CatDoom]

Good stuff!

I do have a question regarding the usage of Wendoth's locative prepositions. The possessive clitic -į precedes its object, attaching to the possessor. However, in your new sample text the locative clitics -ta and -zha seem to come after their objects and attach to them. Is this always the position they take in the sentence?

If so, I'm thinking of effectively turning their Yewedu reflexes into locative and ablative cases, while the other Wendoth prepositions mostly become defunct.

[Alces]

Yes--I've decided that, at least in an early stage of Wendoth, the prepositional clitics were postpositional, so -ta and -zha act as postpositions in that text. I think my initial motivation for making that change was that the instrumental case seemed a bit tacked-on and not really integrated into the grammar, so it seemed better to me to have -shã be just another adpositional clitic, albeit one that developed into a case suffix in all the daughter languages. But in order for the adpositional clitics to develop into case suffixes, they would have had to be postpositions. This does mean Wendoth now violates one of Greenberg's universals, since it has primary VSO word order in transitive sentences, and the universal says that primary VSO word order implies prepositions. So we would expect the daughter languages to resolve the situation, turning some of the postpositional clitics into case suffixes and the rest into prepositions (I'll have to add a note on this to the page). I will also probably temper the violation a little when I update the syntax section by making Wendoth have relatively free word order, with VSO one of the most common word orders in transitive sentences but not outright dominant.

This change of postpositions to prepositions is part of a general trend: I've decided that, originally, Pre-Wendoth was mainly head-final, but it began to develop more and more head-initial constructions as it developed into Wendoth. I'm not sure what my original conception of Pre-Wendoth syntax was, since I've lost all my old files on Pre-Wendoth, but I don't think I ever fleshed it out very much. The thing is, I understood that understanding the phonological and morphological history of the language was a good idea if I wanted to develop an interesting phonology and morphology for the language. But I thought syntax would be different, and that it wouldn't be so necessary to understand the syntactic history. That turned out to be wrong In fact I've never been very happy with Wendoth's syntax. It's always felt to me like a collection of parts which don't fit together very well as a whole. But now that I have an idea of the history of the syntax, I think I will be able to feel more comfortable with it.

For example, I've thought of a way I might be able to explain the situation where VSO order is common in transitive sentences but SV word order is more usual in intransitive sentences. Perhaps there was originally a verb *ga meaning 'give', which was used as a pro-verb meaning 'do to' as in 'Please don't do that to me'. But there was no equivalent pro-verb meaning just 'do'. Just as in English we can say things like 'He hit her, John did', Pre-Wendoth speakers started using constructions like *pa ʔamuŋ ka Zon Meriʔa ga (literally 'He hit her, John gave this to Mary'), with the clause *pa ʔamuŋ ka acting as an object of *ga. There's SVO order in this clause for some reason; perhaps pronouns behaved differently with regards to word order, as in French. Over time, this construction became less and less marked, the ga element at the end tended to be dropped, and the pronouns became agreement suffixes, so we ended up with VSO poųmuq Zeng Ndarų 'John hit Mary'. I'll need to work out more of the details here, but I'll probably end up making something along those lines "official".

Possibly, this development was the initial spark that started the move away from head-final word order, in which case the violation of Greenberg's universal can be put into a perspective where it is, perhaps, less alarming: it's simply due to the fact that this snapshot of Wendoth happens to occur during a short period where the shift to VSO word order has already happened, but the order of adpositions has not "caught up" with it yet.

Anyway, the upshot is that for Yewedu specifically, the scenario you propose is fully possible, indeed quite a natural development of the Wendoth adpositions. But it would also be entirely possible for the adpositions to remain as prepositions in Yewedu (if that was your original conception of them), if you would prefer that, since that would also be a natural development.