A language family sketch

[stinja]

So, about three years ago I doodled up this sketch in my linguistics class instead of paying attention to the intro to historical linguistics lecture. It sat on my computer for most of that time, but tonight I rediscovered it and decided to typeset it. I remember very little about the language family I was sketching out, I don't think I ever really got as far as an actual phonology on any of them

Anyway, here's the sketch. I gave a rendering of the same sentence in nine languages. The first language was the already-archaic normative standard, and the next six are its main daughters. Language 8 was a neighboring language, and 9 was a creole formed from 1 and 8's interaction, using 1 as the lexifier.

Looking back at it the main thing that jumps out to me was that none of these have especially interesting phonologies; at the time I was reasonably afraid of large or exotic phoneme inventories (vowels especially). Anyway, enough talk, here's the sketch. Apologies about the size.

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[WeepingElf]

This looks nice and makes appetite for seeing more of this family - grammar sketches, sound change lists, you know - the nuts and bolts of it.

[Kvan]

This looks nice and makes appetite for seeing more of this family - grammar sketches, sound change lists, you know - the nuts and bolts of it.

Definitely what he said. And some more information: how far apart are these worlds? What sort of technology allows for dissemination of language? Are their ansibles? FTL drives? Is this one system? (I would guess not with "Antispinward" being incorporated into one of the names of the languages). How few and far between are other languages?

I guess my appetite is larger than the meal at this moment in time. But there's an old saying on the internet: "MOAR!"

[stinja]

And some more information: how far apart are these worlds? What sort of technology allows for dissemination of language? Are their ansibles? FTL drives? Is this one system? (I would guess not with "Antispinward" being incorporated into one of the names of the languages). How few and far between are other languages?

Like I said, this was an old project I dug up, so my memory of it is a little bit scanty. Off the top of my head, it was sort of a loosely-conceived largely parody science fiction universe I was putting together. It involved re-scaled physics, where planets were so small they had only a couple dozen square miles of surface area (which has never been, and continues to not be, the way physics works). Anyway that was how I rationalized having the entire planet speak one language (there could only ever be < 100 people or so on even the most densely populated planets).

If I recall correctly, the action was mostly set in the remnants of a large interstellar empire, which had spread out from a planet called Irth. There was faster-than-light travel but transportation was limited to the speed of the fastest ship. The empire spread out significantly, encountering a number of other intelligent races. Then there was some kind of catastrophe (it involved a couple things: a demonic invasion, a plague, and the machines started to come to life) which caused the central power structure to break down. The sketch I gave was for languages of the empire around the time of that breakdown, and it advocates for the people who live in "sprawlworlds" (planets whose landmass is mostly city) to abandon those planets for more scarcely populated homes.

I'll see if I can dig up more examples of the language, I don't know if I ever had much in the way of grammar notes, and if I did it would be mostly for the parent language.

[stinja]

Apologies for the double post. I wasn't able to find my notes, but here's what I was able to reconstruct from vague memories and the language family sketch above.

Normative Imperial Irth is a very lightly fusional VSO language. Verbs are marked for person, tense and mood. Case for nouns is marked by prepositions. Nouns are mostly unmarked, and was no paradigm of agreement.

Phonologically, I think it had a phoneme inventory that looked something like this:

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a i e o u
b p d t g k q
f s š x
w r l j
N

I didn't keep very good notes, but I think q was a voiceless pharyngeal stop? The only noteworthy feature of the phonology is the lack of phonemic voiced fricatives. Phonetically, there was some allophony with the fricatives:

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C[-voice, +continuant] > C[+voice, +continuant] / #_V
C[-voice, +continuant] > C[+voice, +continuant] / V_V

Where they'd be voiced word-initially before a vowel or between vowels. I think there was only one nasal consonant, usually realized as [m] but with some allophony:

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N > C[∂place +nasal] / _C[∂place]

Where there was regressive assimilation of place in consonant clusters. There was unpredictable phonemic stress.

All in all, nothing to write home about, but the sort of thing that's not too bad for an intro linguistics student. I may be able to dig up some more grammatical examples.

[Pangloss]

Hi, I like your languages, but I'm a bit sceptical about the following: q (voiceless pharyngeal stop)--> t.
I don't know of such a change in any Earthly language.

[stinja]

That does seem a little questionable, unless it was part of some kind of chain shift, like *q > *k > t (#3, #4), which seems a little more plausible to me. I think I also had a chain shift in mind for *q > j (#5), as well, going through *q > *h > j (#5).

One thing that's not clear just from the sketch itself is that #2, #3, and #4 are close(r) relatives, as are #5 and #7. That shows itself a little with those chain shifts, where it kind of breaks down like this:

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*q (vulgar proto-Imperial) > *k (proto-central) > k (central imperial #2); t (guilder high imperial #3, south tributary imperial #4)
*q (vulgar proto-Imperial) > *h (proto-spinward) > j (spinward imperial #5); h (special administrative zone imperial #7)

One thing that might be confusing is that, since the SAZ lies in the spinward direction of the Empire, sharing a border with the Horde, the point of contact between the Imperial and Hordish families is between Spinward Imperial and Antispinward Hordish.

[Pangloss]

That does seem a little questionable, unless it was part of some kind of chain shift, like *q > *k > t (#3, #4), which seems a little more plausible to me. I think I also had a chain shift in mind for *q > j (#5), as well, going through *q > *h > j (#5).

One thing that's not clear just from the sketch itself is that #2, #3, and #4 are close(r) relatives, as are #5 and #7. That shows itself a little with those chain shifts, where it kind of breaks down like this:

Code: Select all

*q (vulgar proto-Imperial) > *k (proto-central) > k (central imperial #2); t (guilder high imperial #3, south tributary imperial #4)
*q (vulgar proto-Imperial) > *h (proto-spinward) > j (spinward imperial #5); h (special administrative zone imperial #7)

One thing that might be confusing is that, since the SAZ lies in the spinward direction of the Empire, sharing a border with the Horde, the point of contact between the Imperial and Hordish families is between Spinward Imperial and Antispinward Hordish.

Okay, I'll accept that! By the way, pharyngeal stops are extremely rare sounds (see 'Ingenious Ways to Commit Suicide #281, Trying to Form a Stop by Constricting your Pharynx'). I know of only one language which uses them, a Cushitic language of Tanzania called Iraqw.

[stinja]

Hmm. That does make the phonology that I have seem a little implausible. Maybe it would be better as a pharyngealized verlar stop? Or just a plain glottal stop? Glottal stop would blend in with how vanilla the rest of the consonants are.