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

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

Post by dunomapuka »

I like #3 at 0 YP, maybe later progressing to #4. How to decide? Whichever way we carve it up, my descendant is spoken on the big island. Part of the reasoning for that is that the phonology somewhat resembles Affanonic -- whereas if someone works on a Western dialect they might wish to make it more resemble Cəssın. Another reason is that this is supposed to be the dominant language of the Kørjoh, and should have a prominent position on the coast.

***
Here are some made up Proto-Isthmus words/roots. Tell me if there's anything wrong with 'em.

brak “plant, herb, vegetable”
mul “land”
tsuj(f)-mul “island”
(pa-)pata “flow, move”
past “river”
fen “tree”
tlan “fish”

And some postpositions:
in unknown original meaning; becomes a genitive in Doroh
mina with; together with; becomes comitative suffix
ila to; toward; becomes allative suffix
(a)sla for; for the sake of; becomes benefactive suffix (possibly related to ila)

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

Post by Corumayas »

I guess the question is how much diversity is realistic. In 0 YP the Doroh have been there for around 1300 years (but much longer at the western end of their territory: the Čisse area could be where Eastern Isthmus developed, in the 3rd millenium BP).

(If I put in all the lines I drew last night, I get something that looks kinda like a set of isoglosses...
Image
Maybe how many Doroh dialects we name is not that important, especially if we think of it as more of a continuum.)
dunomapuka wrote:Here are some made up Proto-Isthmus words/roots. Tell me if there's anything wrong with 'em.
Proto-Isthmus has no /r/, so brak isn't possible. It could be blak; or, if you make brak the Proto-Eigə-Isthmus form, it'd become Proto-Isthmus ɖok.

(pa-)pata “flow, move” → past “river” more or less duplicates the semantics of gad- 'flow' → gasd 'stream' (with a further derivation gasd-its 'stream-on' → 'boat', Faraghin gars), but I don't think that's a problem.

The rest looks good! I have some updates I want to make to the PEI and PIsth. descriptions; the one that might be relevant to you is that the suffix that forms participles in Proto-Isthmus is now -dja... -di forms a verbal noun which may or may not be productive in Eastern Isthmus. (In Western, the two merge with the dropping of final vowels.)
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

I think the sense of pata may be more "run."
Corumayas wrote:the one that might be relevant to you is that the suffix that forms participles in Proto-Isthmus is now -dja... -di forms a verbal noun which may or may not be productive in Eastern Isthmus. (In Western, the two merge with the dropping of final vowels.)
Is this verbal noun an abstract one like the "the act of ___"? I had some agent and patient derivations from -adi -udi and I wonder if I should switch them to -adja -udja.

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

Post by Pogostick Man »

Would anybody mind if I started working on my "Antarctic" proposal again? I know I've let it fall to the wayside…

If I'm given the go-ahead, please let me know if there's any important timeline, historical, or cultural things I need to be aware of.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Corumayas »

dunomapuka wrote:Is this verbal noun an abstract one like the "the act of ___"? I had some agent and patient derivations from -adi -udi and I wonder if I should switch them to -adja -udja.
Yeah, exactly. The -di suffix is supposed to be cognate to Ngauro and Miwan -ti, which forms action nouns; and I've come to the conclusion that making that correspond to a participle didn't feel quite right (I think in coming up with that idea I was too influenced/confused by the dual functions of English -ing). After researching a bit, I learned that it's fairly common for participles to be derived from verbal nouns using regular noun → adjective derivation, so I decided to make that happen here. (Which incidentally means that there's also a new noun → adjective suffix -a, which you're welcome to use if you want.)

So yeah, I would recommend -adja and -udja for your agent and patient derivations. And I also encourage you to try using the causative participle (formed with -idja or -ajdja); I think it's pretty nifty:

dadajidja Bleɖus ‘Fate who makes (us) dance’
nopolajdja taʈa astujn ‘your boring sister’
kijbajdja badaɖu asludz ‘their little father who feeds (them)’

It could also be handy for translating certain concepts from Mûtsinamtsys philosophy, e.g.:
Mûts. sihtû’a ‘that which causes us to eat’ (F. hitugə) → PIsth. kijbajdja
Mûts. gmatû’a ‘that which causes us to fly’ (F. matugə) → PIsth. gontajdja
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Dē Graut Bʉr »

Pogostick Man wrote:Would anybody mind if I started working on my "Antarctic" proposal again? I know I've let it fall to the wayside…

If I'm given the go-ahead, please let me know if there's any important timeline, historical, or cultural things I need to be aware of.
Go ahead! Since you're working on an almost entirely undescribed continent, there's nothing you really need to be aware of, apart from the settling date which you've already got right.

Might I suggest you change the name to something which is easier to remember though? Qwa:s !etfãmuǝ:nłen is fine as a native name for Antarctica, but I find it pretty hard to remember that name, so something like "Macro-Antarctican" might be a better name for the family.

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

Post by dunomapuka »

Corumayas wrote:It could also be handy for translating certain concepts from Mûtsinamtsys philosophy, e.g.:
Mûts. sihtû’a ‘that which causes us to eat’ (F. hitugə) → PIsth. kijbajdja
Mûts. gmatû’a ‘that which causes us to fly’ (F. matugə) → PIsth. gontajdja
Great idea, but Mûtsinamtsys philosophy happens over two millennia later! After the east-west split, and probably even after Proto-Doroh. But yeah, calquing the terms seems more interesting than just borrowing them. I believe that a Doroh dialect will be the main language of international transmission for Pa'en -- but in fact not the same dialect as the Kørjah language I'm working on. (something interests me about historical languages that are known chiefly for the texts of a particular religion, like Avestan.)

EDIT:
Corumayas wrote:dadajidja Bleɖus ‘Fate who makes (us) dance’
This sounds like a perfect name for a native cult among the Doroh.... I think the Proto-Doroh reflex is Dārajdze Blēṛus.

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

Post by Pogostick Man »

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:Go ahead! Since you're working on an almost entirely undescribed continent, there's nothing you really need to be aware of, apart from the settling date which you've already got right.
Cool, thanks!
Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:Might I suggest you change the name to something which is easier to remember though? Qwa:s !etfãmuǝ:nłen is fine as a native name for Antarctica, but I find it pretty hard to remember that name, so something like "Macro-Antarctican" might be a better name for the family.
One of my first orders of business is to revamp the language significantly. Another is to find a better name.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Pogostick Man »

I have a few questions regarding the general history and background of Akana. Would anybody be able to get on either Discord (preferred) or IRC in order to discuss this?

Also, I've been noting people updating various Akana-related topics in this thread. Is it OK to post updates here as well or should I use the Akana forums proper?
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Dē Graut Bʉr »

It's OK to post updates here. The AkanaForum is barely used these days, so if you post updates here it's more likely others will see them.

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

Post by Frislander »

Pogostick Man wrote:I have a few questions regarding the general history and background of Akana. Would anybody be able to get on either Discord (preferred) or IRC in order to discuss this?
One small suggestion if I may: maybe get rid of the clicks. We have a click-language already in the form of Xshali, and I guess its relatives and neighbouring languages as well, and I wonder whether it'd be too much to have them in Antarctican as well.
Also, I've been noting people updating various Akana-related topics in this thread. Is it OK to post updates here as well or should I use the Akana forums proper?
Well right now the Akanaforum is basically dead, so best put them up on here, unless you want to get them going again in which case go ahead.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Corumayas »

dunomapuka wrote:Great idea, but Mûtsinamtsys philosophy happens over two millennia later!
Well, yeah... my idea was that that derivational pattern might survive into Doroh to be used that way.
I believe that a Doroh dialect will be the main language of international transmission for Pa'en -- but in fact not the same dialect as the Kørjah language I'm working on. (something interests me about historical languages that are known chiefly for the texts of a particular religion, like Avestan.)
Sounds cool. I'm kind of interested in how Pa'en will interact with Etúgə when it's brought to Huyfárah.
Corumayas wrote:dadajidja Bleɖus ‘Fate who makes (us) dance’
This sounds like a perfect name for a native cult among the Doroh.... I think the Proto-Doroh reflex is Dārajdze Blēṛus.
I'm glad you like it. I get dārajije though—I think you missed leniting the /dʲ/. Using the alternative causative participle suffix -ajdja, I get either dārajajje or dārajajdze, depending on whether /j/ counts as a vowel for the lenition rule. (And then there's another set of options without the reduplication: dājije, dājajje, dājajdze.)

I was going to work on updating the Proto-Isthmus page today, but since Mûtsinam philosophy came up I got sidetracked into Mûtsipsa' etymology... turns out that the element -tû'a that appears all over the place is the same word as tû'e 'seed', and Pa'en means 'beautiful action'.


(Pogostick Man, go ahead and post your questions and updates here if you want to. You don't have to ask for permission!)
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Corumayas wrote:I get dārajije though—I think you missed leniting the /dʲ/. Using the alternative causative participle suffix -ajdja, I get either dārajajje or dārajajdze, depending on whether /j/ counts as a vowel for the lenition rule. (And then there's another set of options without the reduplication: dājije, dājajje, dājajdze.)
I will retain -ajije and -ajdze as competing forms.
Corumayas wrote:I was going to work on updating the Proto-Isthmus page today, but since Mûtsinam philosophy came up I got sidetracked into Mûtsipsa' etymology... turns out that the element -tû'a that appears all over the place is the same word as tû'e 'seed', and Pa'en means 'beautiful action'.
Good work. I wonder if the Doroh will in fact use that causative construction or instead opt for a direct translation of "seed." (looks like rory borrowed that metaphor from Mencius.)

I think nuduuhasihi and ifiisana are intended to come from Takuña, but if no sensible Nualis-Takuña etymology presents itself we might attribute it to some other indigenous family of the continent.

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

Post by Corumayas »

dunomapuka wrote:I will retain -ajije and -ajdze as competing forms.
Sounds good to me.
Good work. I wonder if the Doroh will in fact use that causative construction or instead opt for a direct translation of "seed." (looks like rory borrowed that metaphor from Mencius.)
Thanks, I had fun figuring those out. (It might've been easier if I'd read Mencius, I guess!)
I think nuduuhasihi and ifiisana are intended to come from Takuña, but if no sensible Nualis-Takuña etymology presents itself we might attribute it to some other indigenous family of the continent.
I'm sure they are from Takuña, along with some of the other words we haven't found etymologies for probably. (Rory must've had a sketch of Takuña that he never published, alas.) I don't think we should worry if we can't find etymologies for them in TzirTzi's PNT or Takuña lexicon, though; all our language descriptions are incomplete by necessity, and it's no problem if the current Núalís-Takuña documents are missing some of the words that were borrowed into Mûtsipsa'. We can always add them in later.

(I started looking at the loans from Thokyunèhòta and Zele too, since those languages have both been redone; but it was turning into too big a project. Maybe I'll continue later.)
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Thinking about carrying over some PEI roots into Proto-Isthmus. This will involve deciding on a more exact PEI form, of course. Here are some suggestions; the Isthmus meaning may in the end influence what we think the original PEI meaning was.

ŋijz- "speak" > PI njijdz-a- "speak", njijdz-u- "is uttered," njijdz-uj- something like "proclaims, establishes, pronounces"
dalg- "think, know, be aware of" > PI dalg-a "see", dalg-u "appear", dalg-uj "show" (if an L-grade ever existed maybe there is an original *dag-)
dlen "many, large quantity" > dlen, suppose in PI this becomes a suffix meaning "10x" (tsun-dlen "twenty") with some extended form being the basis for "hundred"
miwt "woman, female" > PI mjut "woman, female"
samtor "village, house, home" (maybe originally a compound) > PI samto? "home, home village, homeland, native"

Any thoughts about numerals 3-10?

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

Post by Corumayas »

Corumayas wrote:
dunomapuka wrote:I will retain -ajije and -ajdze as competing forms.
Sounds good to me.
Except for two details I didn't notice when I posted that:
1. The first suffix should just be -ije; the -aj was part of the stem dāraj-.
2. The second suffix should be -ajze because of the last rule in the Proto-Doroh sound changes. (That we both missed this is evidence in favor of using a sound change applier!)

There are a handful of minor issues with the Eastern Isthmus sound changes, by the way:
  • First, a really trivial one: Proto-Isthmus doesn’t have w, so the rules that define what happens to jw and wj have nothing to act on.
  • Either the rule Cʲʷ > Cʷ similarly does nothing, or it means that Cju merges with Cu. I asked Radius about it once and he couldn’t remember what he intended, so I guess you can choose whether you want Cju Cu to merge as Cʷu or stay distinct as Cʲu Cʷu. Whatever you decide, we should probably rewrite the rules to make it clear.
  • The sound changes do not produce the 2SG forms in the pronoun chart; taking the rules in the order listed, I get NOM tʰʷunʲ, GEN/ACC ostʰʷunʲ. The rules would have to be significantly rearranged to get tʰʷo:nʲ, ostʰʷo:nʲ. I’m not sure if it’s preferable to change the rules or the pronoun.
  • Lastly, Eastern Isthmus’s palatalized retroflexes may be problematic. Silke Hamann in The Phonetics and Phonology of Retroflexes argues that the tongue position for palatalization is incompatible with that for retroflexes; but she also says that “in some cases secondary palatalization of retroflexes is phonologically possible, though it still remains phonetically impossible.” (p. 44). In a palatalizing context, there seem to be three things retroflexes can do (p. 102):
    1. de-retroflexion: lose their retroflex-ness, possibly merging with the palatalized alveolars (or adding rounding to distinguish them, see p. 78; this could feed into the Cʲʷ > Cʷ rule, giving it a purpose after all)
    2. de-palatalization: resist palatalization and remain retroflex
    3. separate palatal realization: realize the palatalization as a following, separately articulated [j]—this is rare, though (according to Hamann this is probably what happens in two languages of India which are reported to have palatalized retroflexes, Toda and Kashmiri)
    I suggest picking either 1. or 2. here. Either way, the reflexes in Doroh should probably be somewhat different from what they currently are.
While I’m looking at this stuff, I have a few comments on the Proto-Doroh changes too; these are more subjective, so feel free to disregard them if you want:
  • I’m not a big fan of the f > w change, partly because word-initial f in Proto-Isthmus comes from Proto-Eigə-Isthmus w in the first place.
  • The merger of labialized alveolars and retroflexes (ʂ sʷ > ʂʷ & ɻ ɾʷ > ɻʷ) could happen across the board (i.e. also ʈ tʷ > ʈʷ, ɖ dʷ > ɖʷ, ɳ nʷ > ɳʷ, ɭ lʷ > ɭʷ).
  • The loss-of-palatalization rules look somewhat random and chaotic to me… and again I think more thought should be had about the palatalized retroflexes.
dunomapuka wrote:Any thoughts about numerals 3-10?
I haven’t thought much about them, but I think I’d like to have non-derived roots for 1–10. Not all of them have to be cognate across both branches of the EI family though.

Finally, since you’re thinking about bringing Meshi and Miwan words into Isthmus, I’d better tell you that I’m seriously considering removing o from the PEI vowel inventory. This wouldn’t change the Proto-Isthmus inventory, but it would mean that its o all comes from PEI wa we, and it would require changing the forms of some words (including your suggestion samtor, whose history I’d want to look at more closely anyway). Would this cause any problems for you?
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Corumayas wrote:(That we both missed this is evidence in favor of using a sound change applier!)
Yeah, I'm gonna start using one. I always did my SCs "manually" because it helps me get a certain gut feeling for how the changes work, but in this case I'm getting overwhelmed by the number of stages I'm trying to keep track of: PI > Eastern Isthmus > Doroh > Central Doroh > "Island Doroh" (it looks like the name for this dialect is going to be Ṭømjuñar or similar).
Corumayas wrote:Either the rule Cʲʷ > Cʷ similarly does nothing, or it means that Cju merges with Cu. I asked Radius about it once and he couldn’t remember what he intended, so I guess you can choose whether you want Cju Cu to merge as Cʷu or stay distinct as Cʲu Cʷu. Whatever you decide, we should probably rewrite the rules to make it clear.
I prefer to just keep Cju Cʷu distinct so we can have more /y/ later. In other words /j/ never labializes.
Corumayas wrote:The sound changes do not produce the 2SG forms in the pronoun chart; taking the rules in the order listed, I get NOM tʰʷunʲ, GEN/ACC ostʰʷunʲ. The rules would have to be significantly rearranged to get tʰʷo:nʲ, ostʰʷo:nʲ. I’m not sure if it’s preferable to change the rules or the pronoun.
Gonna change the pronoun, keep the rules.
Corumayas wrote:Lastly, Eastern Isthmus’s palatalized retroflexes may be problematic...
I think the solution is to de-palatalize because I like the distribution of retroflexes in Doroh. Let's say that /i/ also centralizes in this context, so /ʈi/ > [ʈɨ].
Corumayas wrote:I’m not a big fan of the f > w change, partly because word-initial f in Proto-Isthmus comes from Proto-Eigə-Isthmus w in the first place.
I included that because that's what seemed to happen to the pronouns as listed...I agree just reversing that change is lame. I guess I could just keep /f/.
Corumayas wrote:The merger of labialized alveolars and retroflexes (ʂ sʷ > ʂʷ & ɻ ɾʷ > ɻʷ) could happen across the board (i.e. also ʈ tʷ > ʈʷ, ɖ dʷ > ɖʷ, ɳ nʷ > ɳʷ, ɭ lʷ > ɭʷ).
Good idea but I'll pass because I like the distribution of retroflexes as is, and I have a certain fondness for asymmetrical sound changes.
Corumayas wrote:The loss-of-palatalization rules look somewhat random and chaotic to me… and again I think more thought should be had about the palatalized retroflexes.
I can regularize this a bit by saying /bʲ/ > /bz/ to match what happens to /pʲ/. And we're losing the palatalized retroflexes. Then there's this change: bʲ dʲ > bij dij / #_

I find this one really weird and awkward, unless there's some interesting precedent from Irish or a Slavic language or something? If there are no objections I think I'll lose it.

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

Post by Cedh »

I have just posted a major update to my Lukpanic language O Ayōndui. The syntax section is still missing, but the rest should be fairly solid now. Highlights include:

- The negative past tense auxiliary is now sūshi. 8)
- A few of the locative pseudo-cases have changed.
- The grammar sketch contains a wealth of derivational morphology, roughly 40 morphemes so far.
- There is a closed set of only 21 lexical adjectives.
- The lexicon is online, currently standing at 581 words.
- The language has gained a fairly complex possessive system, which I have not described yet, but it consists of the following elements: (a) possessive pronouns in -nu, used whenever the possessor is expressed as a pronoun; (b) a construct state in -u (a reflex of the former genitive preposition), used with inalienable relationships where the possessor is a full noun phrase; and (c) several different pseudo-case endings with primarily locative meaning, which also function as quasi-genitives but distinguish the type of possessive relation. (b) and (c) may also co-occur (and must even do so in specific situations). Stay tuned for this...
- The language will also have overdeclension (aka surdéclinaison) à la Basque, where an inflected word can be used as a base for further derivation. This is also not written up yet, but it will allow for things like this:

Code: Select all

zēhēmeffasshimakkani
zēhēmi-h  -h  -a   -h  -shim-a   -h  -kan-i
torch -DEF-COM-NMLZ-DEF-ESS -NMLZ-DEF-BEN-ATTR
‘for the one who acts as if he carried the torch’

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

Post by Corumayas »

Cool, Cedh! It’s neat to see a really fleshed-out Lukpanic language, and all the interesting things you’re doing with it.

(It doesn’t really fit into our old Eastern/Western Lukpanic dialect scheme though—I don’t see any early sound changes that are shared with other Lukpanic varieties—so it seems like the classification scheme of Lukpanic dialects will have to be expanded to include it. Do you imagine this as a far-western variety that’s developed there since proto-Lukpanic times? Or are the speakers more recent immigrants from somewhere further east—colonists or refugees perhaps?)

* * *

Dunomapuka, that all looks good to me. Thoughts on a couple of details:
dunomapuka wrote:I think the solution is to de-palatalize because I like the distribution of retroflexes in Doroh. Let's say that /i/ also centralizes in this context, so /ʈi/ > [ʈɨ].
Thinking about it more, I wonder if it might be best to say that retroflexes might have been phonologically palatalized in Eastern Isthmus, but if so the exact realization of this is unknown, or varied between dialects. That way anyone designing a related language (including Kennan, if more of that ever surfaces) would be free to choose a different result.

But I do like your solution for Doroh, and the allophonic introduction of [ɨ] (which could become phonemic with further changes, if you want). It looks like a nice starting point for developing a vowel+consonant harmony similar to what Cedh did with Cəssın. Would /j/ still be deleted next to retroflexes, or does it stick around since they don't palatalize? (And I guess the same questions should be asked about [ɬ], since it’s also exempt from palatalization?)
I included that because that's what seemed to happen to the pronouns as listed...I agree just reversing that change is lame. I guess I could just keep /f/.
I think Cedh’s purpose with that change was to produce more labialized consonants (and thus more /y ø/). If you want to keep that effect, maybe you could make it a conditional change that only occurs /C_ or something.

Also, maybe you already know this, but the old Doroh sound change rules you started from were written before Radius added aspiration and vowel length to Eastern Isthmus; so you might want to put in some more changes involving those features.

* * *

Since there’s been no objection, I think I’ll move forward with my plan to remove /o/ from Proto-Eigə-Isthmus. Most Proto-Isthmus words with /o/ will stay, but be reassigned to PEI /wa/ or /we/; there are a few where that doesn’t work because of syllable structure constraints, so they’ll have to change in Proto-Isthmus too. [Edit: actually, I just realized that even those can mostly stay: they can come from PEI sequences like /uwa uwe ura ure/.]
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

I'm gonna go ahead and wikify the revised changes soon.
Corumayas wrote:But I do like your solution for Doroh, and the allophonic introduction of [ɨ] (which could become phonemic with further changes, if you want). It looks like a nice starting point for developing a vowel+consonant harmony similar to what Cedh did with Cəssın. Would /j/ still be deleted next to retroflexes, or does it stick around since they don't palatalize? (And I guess the same questions should be asked about [ɬ], since it’s also exempt from palatalization?)
I got rid of the /ɨ/ thing because it had some later result I didn't like. /j/ stays next to a retroflex, so PIsth. gejṭ "mighty" > Proto-Doroh žejṭ "big." The /j/ is lost, however along the way to Ṭømjuñar, where the reflex is ẓaṛ. The same should be true of [ɬ], though I don't have an example at hand.

Corumayas wrote:I think Cedh’s purpose with that change was to produce more labialized consonants (and thus more /y ø/). If you want to keep that effect, maybe you could make it a conditional change that only occurs /C_ or something.
Yes, that conditional change allows us to keep the interesting Proto-Doroh alternation fe "you (pl.)", aṣø "your (pl.)."

I really like the development of the labial fricatives, by the way, here's the stages from PIsth. > Doroh > Ṭømjuñar:
/f/ > /f/ > /v/
/βʷ ɣʷ/ > /w/ > /v/
/bʷ/ > /β/ > /v/
/pʷ/ > /pf/ > /f/
/sm/ > /hm/ > /f/

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

Post by Corumayas »

Cool. I just edited the Proto-Isthmus verbal morphology section to put in the new participle and verbal noun suffixes (also reorganized slightly and added a few examples); and I changed a couple small things in the lexicon.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

dunomapuka wrote:
Corumayas wrote:But I do like your solution for Doroh, and the allophonic introduction of [ɨ] (which could become phonemic with further changes, if you want). It looks like a nice starting point for developing a vowel+consonant harmony similar to what Cedh did with Cəssın. Would /j/ still be deleted next to retroflexes, or does it stick around since they don't palatalize? (And I guess the same questions should be asked about [ɬ], since it’s also exempt from palatalization?)
I got rid of the /ɨ/ thing because it had some later result I didn't like. /j/ stays next to a retroflex, so PIsth. gejṭ "mighty" > Proto-Doroh žejṭ "big." The /j/ is lost, however along the way to Ṭømjuñar, where the reflex is ẓaṛ. The same should be true of [ɬ], though I don't have an example at hand.
I find [jʈ] really hard to pronounce, so maybe the /j/ there could have had a retracted allophone like [ɻ] or [ɚ̯] before retroflexes from early on?

BTW Cəssin vowel harmony was originally thought of as having developed under strong areal influence of western Doroh dialects; it would be nice if this idea remains plausible.
Corumayas wrote:Cool, Cedh! It’s neat to see a really fleshed-out Lukpanic language, and all the interesting things you’re doing with it.

(It doesn’t really fit into our old Eastern/Western Lukpanic dialect scheme though—I don’t see any early sound changes that are shared with other Lukpanic varieties—so it seems like the classification scheme of Lukpanic dialects will have to be expanded to include it. Do you imagine this as a far-western variety that’s developed there since proto-Lukpanic times? Or are the speakers more recent immigrants from somewhere further east—colonists or refugees perhaps?)
O Ayōndui shares *aə > /ai/ and *h > Ø with U Adonupu, but these are best thought of as areal developments. It also shares the sporadic merger of *Ku > *KP / _V with Fu Pitão and Hu Shĩmyashta where this is a general change, but in OA this only affects a very small number of words and should be analysed as a chance resemblance. In my view, O Ayōndui definitely forms a primary branch of its own that starts right from Proto-Lukpanic, and is essentially defined by its satem-like treatment of the velar and labial-velar consonants.

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

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Cedh wrote:I find [jʈ] really hard to pronounce
Heheh my heritage language has this, so I don't. :)

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

Post by dunomapuka »

Cedh wrote:BTW Cəssin vowel harmony was originally thought of as having developed under strong areal influence of western Doroh dialects; it would be nice if this idea remains plausible.
Yes -- I won't be working directly on Western Doroh but I would expect it to develop a similar harmonic system with back unrounded vowels. Central Doroh lacks them; it's phonologically closer to Affanonic and Lotoka.

Proto-Doroh is contemporaneous with Faraghin, the Western dialects should be markedly divergent by -500, still a bit before classical Fáralo, so with plenty of time to introduce this phonological restructuring.

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

Post by Arzena »

Is the Akana wiki down for anyone else?
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