Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs
Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 5:23 am
So I finally got myself to conlang enough to justify making one of these, yay!
Common Zein. Think a Proto-Romance sort of scale (the common ancestor of a langfamily descended from an imperial prestigelang), but aside from massive reanalyzation of the verbal system the similarities end right there. Its parentlang, Imperial Salanjan, was your standard glorious imperial language, until its imperial polity was massively disrupted by a nomad invasion. Truly by this point it had already changed itself massively, but this provides a convenient cut-off point, and extant examples of Zein, quite distinct from Salanjan, in local texts (particularly those from Kenrui, the Valley Źijn state left over following the incursion of the Udraþ into the lower Rægil river valley.)
Salanjan was a fairly case-heavy agglutinative language, with heavily ergative syntax. So heavy in fact that while the Zein daughters lost case marking almost entirely, they still retain the ergative alignment of their ancestor, marked via word order: muŧok ɔgɔẉeq ko 'she loves me' versus pontal muŧɔk 'she goes' (in case it's not clear, the order is Erg-V-Abs). It also developed a 4-way gender contrast (masc - fem - common - neuter) where none existed in Salanjan, and some freaky pluralization patterns, which I'll post next time so this post doesn't get lost in a comp seizure.
I'll close with a full sentence: śɛmaŧɔ nal ɔwønćereq isɔkɔẉeĩ kusń orehɛẉɛ. "the trader habitually moved wine casks between cities."
breakout (parentheses indicate linking approximants): ś-ɛmaŧ-ɔ nal ɔ-(w)-ønćer-eq isɔkɔ-(ẉ)-eĩ kusń orehɛ-(ẉ)-ɛ
interlinear: DEFpref-trader-DIRcommon again/often PRETpref-move3tr wine_caskPL among/between cityPL
Common Zein. Think a Proto-Romance sort of scale (the common ancestor of a langfamily descended from an imperial prestigelang), but aside from massive reanalyzation of the verbal system the similarities end right there. Its parentlang, Imperial Salanjan, was your standard glorious imperial language, until its imperial polity was massively disrupted by a nomad invasion. Truly by this point it had already changed itself massively, but this provides a convenient cut-off point, and extant examples of Zein, quite distinct from Salanjan, in local texts (particularly those from Kenrui, the Valley Źijn state left over following the incursion of the Udraþ into the lower Rægil river valley.)
Salanjan was a fairly case-heavy agglutinative language, with heavily ergative syntax. So heavy in fact that while the Zein daughters lost case marking almost entirely, they still retain the ergative alignment of their ancestor, marked via word order: muŧok ɔgɔẉeq ko 'she loves me' versus pontal muŧɔk 'she goes' (in case it's not clear, the order is Erg-V-Abs). It also developed a 4-way gender contrast (masc - fem - common - neuter) where none existed in Salanjan, and some freaky pluralization patterns, which I'll post next time so this post doesn't get lost in a comp seizure.
I'll close with a full sentence: śɛmaŧɔ nal ɔwønćereq isɔkɔẉeĩ kusń orehɛẉɛ. "the trader habitually moved wine casks between cities."
breakout (parentheses indicate linking approximants): ś-ɛmaŧ-ɔ nal ɔ-(w)-ønćer-eq isɔkɔ-(ẉ)-eĩ kusń orehɛ-(ẉ)-ɛ
interlinear: DEFpref-trader-DIRcommon again/often PRETpref-move3tr wine_caskPL among/between cityPL