zompist bboard

born from a mutual frustration with an inability to do geography well

an amalgamation of two poorly laid out conworlds

now with trade networks and borrowing

watch this space

_________________
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

tà yi póbo tsùtsùr ciivà dè!

there would be a juche wizard war chant in this space, but i think we have all learned a lesson about trusting services that run on machines that the creator of said services administers herself

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

This sounds potentially interesting. Godspeed.

(This post to receive notifications on there being written in here.)

I think it is now time to write about the current proceeds of the conference of the society for the exploration of the five springs, by which i mean "yng and me went on irc and talked about congeography and areal features".



The center of our convenient rectangular view is the group of large islands that are mostly ruled by the Tsi Empire, a multiethnic maritime empire held together mostly by reeds and regular payment of tributes. To the north is what the Tsi call the Spring of the Dog or the Dog Continent, a continent characterized by a dry and arid climate (at least by Tsi standards), and an abundance of mountains by the coast. To the South and West is a large Eurantartica, which to the Tsi is known primarily via the presence of a civilization that, due to convenient access to ore deposits, has so far both resisted attempts at vassalization and become an indispensable trade partner.

Linguistically, this area is of significant diversity. On the islands, Tsiic (including Cuhbi and Tsi itself) and Kaam-Yerte languages are widely spoken; the Nta river delta and its surroundings are populated mostly with Kangshuic speakers, and the inhabitants of the southern reaches of the Dog Continent speak Kllkic languages, alongside several isolates and smaller families.

With the exception of the Kllkic languages, the languages of this area all share several features. Phonologically, the large majority are tonal, with the usual tone system being a per-syllable pitch distinction with two or three levels. Another pervasive feature is an alveolar-retroflex distinction, as well as relatively large vowel inventories. The Kaam-Yerte and Kangshuic families additionally share with each other a widespread presence of uvular consonants.

Grammatically, there are similarly many common features. As concerns morphology, the languages of the area generally have a medium grade of synthesis on the verb, and relatively little on nouns. Both case marking and person agreement on the verb are uncommon; where person agreement does happen, it it usually in syntactically restricted environments. In Cuhbi, for instance, verbs are marked for topic only in the absence of an overt NP in the sentential topic position. Similarly, Southern Kaam-Yerte languages usually affixally mark only the patient of transitive verbs.

Syntactically, complex predicates of all types are widespread. All language families tend to make heavy use of serial verb constructions; Tsiic languages and Kaam-Yerte languages that have been in heavy contact with them additionally tend to have large inventories of phrasal verbs, thanks to the closed class of true verbs in most Tsiic languages.

For illustration, we have translated a sentence from the Kül Tegin inscription into representative members of each family.

"When the blue sky above and the dark earth below were made, then were made between them both the sons of men."

Tsi (Tsiic):
apság prʰə t!óóŋ dro n|úúŋ ŋa χǫǫ ʃok!ʰąç bvʰa dʰęę dʰe dzep ʃok!ʰąç
apság prʰə t!óó-ŋ dro n|úúŋ ŋa χǫǫ ʃo-k!ʰąç bvʰa dʰęę dʰe dzep ʃo-k!ʰąç
lo! blue sky=and black earth be_with when downwards-come_down-DEP time this[5] mankind downwards-come_down


Risha Cuhbi (Tsiic):
fícya fálada adèyatà duya ugoda acayitàyi ubùùʔà kayi ngáhobùù ciiʔà
fíci-a fálada-a a-dè-ø-i-a-tà duyi-a ugoda-a a-ca-i-tà=i u-bì-â-t=ʔà ka=i ngá=o-bì-â-t ci-t=ʔà
sky-OBL blue-OBL STAT-be_above-IMP.REAL-NOM-OBL-COM_OBL earth-OBL black-OBL STAT-be_below-IMP_REAL-NOM-OBL-COM_OBL PASS-come_out-VEN-PERF.REAL=EV man=TOP then=CONJ-come_up-VEN-PERF.REAL be_between-VEN-PERF.REAL=EV

Kangshi (Kangshuic):
qɤxâ qɤndǽ ŋsu bʁɤ̀u bmo mdì ni ŋmɤʂtæ̂ tɤ mxbɯ̂ ʂtæ̂ mzɤpa
qɤ-xâ qɤ-ndǽ ŋsu b-ʁɤ̀u b-mo mdì ni ŋ=m=ʂtæ̂ tɤ m=xbɯ̂ ʂtæ̂ m-sɤ-pa
cVI-sky cVI-green be_with cIV-earth cIV-black two LOC NMLZ=REAL=be_born.PFV then REAL=be_between be_born LOC PL-cI-man

Pirka (Kangshuic):
ù ntɛ̀h ʃą́ hɔ̀ ú lùər mwə́ɣ m̀ rtɛ́y tə́ m̀ phyə̀ŋ rtɛ́y ų̀ pá
ù ntɛ̀h ʃą́ hɔ̀ ú lùər mwə́ɣ m̀ rtɛ́y tə́ m̀ phyə̀ŋ rtɛ́y ų̀ pá
DEF green sky and DEF black earth REAL be_born then REAL be_between be_born DEF.PL man

Ubghuu (Kaam-Yerte):
qààŋɢɨ̀ pɕírkí pɛ́ʔ ʂóó vɔ̀ɖáʔ bè ghàb ɽɨ́yp ùdhúú ŋgə̀lyùù thə̀qáàŋ zę́ę́
qàâŋ-gi pɕír-gi pɛ́ʔ ʂóó u-ɔ̀ɖáʔ bè ghàb ɽɨ́yp ù-dhúú ŋgə̀ly=ùù thə-qáâŋ zę́ę́
make.REAL-CVB.ANT lie.REAL-CVB.ANT blue sky REL-be_above and black earth REL-be_below be_between=it_is_known PASS-make.REAL man

bumplaceholder

uguu

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

beep boop

Proto-Qoic* > ??? > Proto-Kangshuic > Kangshi
*ɗiɠaːm > *təjʔɛːm > *dzaam₃₅ > zâu

1. It's an open question how large Kangshuic actually is, and where Kangshuic stops and the next level above it starts. There are areal effects to consider here: Proto-Kangshuic as it stands had seven tones. Kangshi retains four, Pirka collapsed them down to just two, unless I change it, which I probably have to in some way or other -- tone in Kangshuic was originally supposed to be much younger. The archipelagic languages so far all seem to have two- or three-tone systems. Did Kangshi and Pirka lose tones under their influence? If yes, what was spoken where coastal Kangshuic languages are spoken now?

2. If the archipelagic languages have tone now, and Proto-Kangshuic had tone then, what is the general history of tone in the area? Given that PK was probably spoken in a shitty mountain valley, the developments could be unrelated. Then again, rGyalrong languages were isolated enough to become batshit, but mostly not isolated enough to hide from becoming tonal. Do other Qoic languages have tone?

3. If Kaam-Yerte came from the north, and Kllk is any indication, Kaam-Yerte tone is relatively young. Alternatively, Kllk might *not* be an indication -- if Tsiic didn't spread across the islands until after KY did, KY either didn't pick its tones up from there or KY tone is very young. The islands might have been a tone zone for a long time, but then, Kllk would seem to be evidence against that. Where is the Tsiic homeland?

Qɤxâ mzdìe ʁɯ ɯbdɤ ŋɤzǽ bɤ̂ ŋbste mzɤpa.

Mzɤpa mspûa ɯbdɤ ɯŋí oʁú bɤ̂ ŋspu è ʁɯ ni qɤxâ.

Zùa. Zùa. Zùa. Zùa. Zùa. Zùa. Zùa.

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

IIRC Kharidze/Kaam-Yerte sprachbund is prohibited by geography, but on the off chance that it isn't:

* Amqoli develops aspirated stops. This has internal justification (there's a Caucasian-like cluster POA rule influenced by kt- and kp-like clusters becoming kh, Px > Ph, some other stuff after syncope) but could be due to outside influence.
* AR-Kharidze loses PK implosives. D-Kharidze doesn't, but Deghuri can be either a regional mountain language or an unimportant relic, in which case there'd need to be another mountain lingua franca. If Deghuri is important, A probably has implosives in D loanwords.
* A has locative verbalizers that cliticize to noun phrases, tho in modern A you more often get complicated noun phrases being locativized by sticking the verb on a pronoun that refers to them. PK was probably SOV (Rengni might be SVO but A is definitely SOV and D probably is) so this could be cliticization of previous locative verbs. So for "be on the beach" you'd have something like (with whatever verbal morphology). Hathic also has locative verbs, which could do the same thing (if Hathic and Kharidze end up in contact or in the same sprachbund, which they probably don't because Hathic-speakers are Foonesian Vikings; it'd be a Makhachkala Norse scenario at the very least) but are probably like and probably don't get turned into morphology except maybe in the branches that develop heavy agglutinativity, like whichever variety of Hathic Ketas is -- of course, agglutinativity could be Hluic influence, but Hathe itself is supposed to be polysynthetic so...

Also, Gehui (Proto-Hathic) has clicks, which are lost in one branch and retained in another. One of these branches is C-Hathic (Cherun/Jedlug) and another is N-Hathic (Ngmwragh) but I forget which / where they are.

Is there any sort of pronoun schema like Mitian here? I notice that Vengic and Kharidze could share a 1/2 = k/n thing. Kett has... what, 1S ne and 2S cey < probably *tsu. Kannow did a rGyalrong and fucked with its pronouns so it can't be fit into anything unless there's some agglutinative stuff. Arve is 1S en and 2S... something like *dih, so Kett and Arve form a sort of Mitian. I forget what happens in Sestmag but I can probably make it fit that as well.

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

I have no idea what KY pronouns are except I think the ubghuu 1S starts with k, which is a stable enough sound in the family for it to be ancient. Kangshuic pronouns are complicated: Kangshi has ʁʐâ, from PK *ɣ-raa, which originally was originally a reflexive (*raa meant body at some point) that got turned into the oblique form of the 1S pronoun in Nuclear Kangshuic. Kangshi subsequently lost the direct form, which looks like *sa (e.g. White Mountain Kangshi tlhɯ).

The *ɣ- in the first form surfaces as something marking reflexivity or something similar (it is also a subject versioner in Kangshi, and is an egophoric marker elsewhere) in various languages, and probably continues an older 1S pronoun in *k-. The form *sa as a pronoun is a Kangshuic innovation, which might continue a pronominal affix that liberated itself from the verb complex.

I don't think I have any language that isn't Jalvaan that has well-defined non-1S pronouns, so n-forms can be inserted basically anywhere (although if KY had them anciently, they're probably no longer recognizable -- PKY initial non-stops are pretty unstable).

I should write up my languages/families too.

Amqoli has zha, but velar plosives are unstable in Kharidze (Amqoli merges *k *g to /q/ and develops new /k g/ from *kl *gl and maybe *kr *gr clusters); I figure this could come from pre-PK *Rkæ, where R represents some sort of augment that triggers voicing -- of course, I could also have *kæ > *kja and *kj > *j.

...No, that's wrong, Deghuri has ī, which implies *eʁ... or this could go back to something like, um, *éko, which would imply a stressed Deghuri form īgū... but that's still wrong, because pre-Amqoli *ʁ doesn't cause vowel warping; only inherited PK *ʁ does. Another possibility is *éŋ(o); AR ŋ > ʁ... so this could imply an augment *eN- prepended to a Konean (~Mitian) ancient 1SG *ko.

Presumably this means the Kharidze verbal system should be reworked, but it was already the case that the Kharidze verbal system should be reworked. As for Kangshuic *sa33, however, the current Kharidze first-person markers were (unless the gender distinction is an Amqoli/AR innovation) something like *-ts for 1SG.MASC and *-t for 1SG.FEM. I don't know if it's possible to make a connection there; dentals are fairly stable in Kharidze, aside from the Rengni voiced dental chain shift.

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

/me lols at Nort's new nick.

_________________
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

Anyway, the most important thing is geography, so:

Hathic spreads across a lot of islands, the largest of which is Hathenai (Hathe: /ɦaˤðənajə/), which should be somewhere very cold. The Foonesians discover Iceland.
Yia is somewhere near a coast, and spreads out onto some islands, like Ketas, where Ketas (position unknown within Hathic) and Gyitha (Hluic) are spoken. Within Yia:
* Vengic contains Vian (an exonym; Vian: /ⁿdẑ̩wɒ̃̀/), the language of the minor empire Zzxzzyx (Vian: /zə̂ⁿdẑ̩/). It may or may not have any insular presence.
* Hluic expands onto some islands, like Gejaehl (Hlu: /ɠeʄæɬ/) and Ketas (Gyitha: /ketas/).
* The position of Zotic is unknown.
* Narngic influences the Kharidze language Rengni. Presumably it is far inland.
* The position of Whatic is unknown, but presumably it is in an isolated backwater somewhere.
Kharidze is spoken by mountain bandits, who require mountains. Rengni is a Kharidze language spoken by mountain bandits who left the mountains and ended up in Narngic territory.
Shit Altaic is another coastal language, probably spoken far away from the aforementioned families. Within Shit Altaic:
* Kannow (/kʷʰannəw/) develops into Enzielu (/ɛnts̪jelu/), the language of the main Civilized Country. Enze is essentially China, so it has similar geographical constraints. It has no insular presence.
* Kett (Insular: /ˌserxes ˈkehtʙ̥/) has two dialects, Insular and Continental. Proto-Kett shares some areal features with Kannow.
* Arve (Raston dialect: /hɛu̯wɪj/) is spoken on the same island as Insular Kett.
* Sestmag (Sestmag: /ɕɕmɒ/) fuck it who cares about Sestmag

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

alright time to do this nonsense what I have been putting off

Kaam-Yerte

Kaam-Yerte is a middlingly large language family spoken on Tsalaysia and surrounding territories, mostly coterminous with Tsiic speakers. Kaam-Yerte speakers mostly occupy the less fertile inlands, having been displaced from the better lands by the Tsiic speakers. The two families have had strong influence upon each other, Tsiic languages absorbing certain (especially phonological) features from their Kaam-Yerte substrates, and surviving Kaam-Yerte languages in return borrowing words and grammatical constructions from their Tsiic superstrates. An exception are divergent Kaam-Yerte languages spoken near the original homeland, which does not have a large population of Tsiic speakers.

Phonologically, the principal distinguishing characteristics are uvular and retroflex series, aspirated consonants, a more or less pervasive palatalization distinction, tone and a large vowel inventory, most of which features are shared with many Tsiic languages. Some Kaam-Yerte languages have borrowed clicks from Tsiic (perhaps even Hathic?) languages, and a great majority have borrowed breathy voiced stops.

Their most notable lexical feature is a relatively large set of highly specific locative verbs that can be serialised with other verbs to indicate location. For instance, there are words in most Kaam-Yerte languages meaning things like "be in a river", "be in a house", "be on the coast of a body of water" and so on. Many of these verbs are ancient, so that there is no connection, synchronically or diachronically, between a locative verb and the noun word it indicates location in. However, some are more recent, and a few languages retain the ability to derive new locative verbs. The majority of languages in which they are a closed class make use of several different strategies to form new locatives. Some have also mostly lost the locative verbs, using instead another strategy calqued on the local Tsiic language.

The only Kaam-Yerte language that has been thought about in any amount of detail is Ubghuu. Ubghuu is spoken on Risha, and is in heavy contact with the local Cuhbi dialects. There is significant lexical and grammatical influence from Cuhbi, including the shift of the relative form to closely match the Cuhbi conjunct form and the subsequent abandonment of the converbal forms, development of evidentiality clitics and the shift from person marking to egophoricity marking, as well as a greater prominence of aspectual in comparison to modal marking. How widely the original morphosyntactic features of (Old) Ubghuu are spread in KY is unknown, as I don't know about its exact cladistic position within the family.

Qoic

Qoic is a very diverse mountain-based language family, of which at least parts are presumably in contact with Kharidze (but who knows), roughly comparable to Sino-Tibetan if Sinitic were much smaller and Tibetan the most relevant language. The presumably biggest, and only worked-on, branch of Qoic is Kangshuic.

Kangshuic languages are, for the most part, highly tonal, strongly prefixing languages, tones generally attaching to the word rather than the syllable as a unit. Many Kangshuic languages display a strong noun class system. As in other languages of the area, person marking is uncommon on the verb, and mood and aspect are the primary TAM distinctions, tense being almost entirely unknown.

Phonologically, Kangshuic languages, apart from their generally very large amount of tones (Proto-Kangshuic must be reconstructed as having seven), generally also have unusual syllable structures, allowing large clusters in the onset, but no or very few consonants in the coda. Kangshi is a representative Kangshuic language.

A non-Kangshuic Qoic language is the strange Pirka, which is a sister language to the common ancestor of Kangshuic languages.

Other languages that may or may not exist are:
Ntaratu and its relatives, including the highly divergent Nyipa. These are very straightforward SOV languages with a very Tsez-like system of noun cases and the maybe mildly interesting feature that the only contrast in their consonants is one of prenasalization.
Jalvaan, which phonologically is basically Persian, and grammatically some form of shit Graeco-Latin with Kiranti and Dravidian superstrates. This was originally supposed to be the Sumerian in my conworld, but since it is somewhat boring and there ought to be better ways to get writing that probably won't happen.

These languages, if they are a thing, would probably be somewhere else entirely than every other language so far presented.

Hluic is not a terribly large subfamily, so it doesn't need that much space.

Rengni has a sound change involving knocking stress back to the first syllable, so let's say it's influenced specifically by Narngic. And they share front rounded vowels.

Near Kharidze in contact with Macro-Vengic is an interesting idea. That could be Hluic (tho not Hlu itself) or Zotic, or maybe both. The source of influence would be something in the D subgroup, I think; Amqoli is pretty far into the mountains, and the lingua franca of Kharidzeland, the Zhjumna mountain range (maybe *yujim-ɗá > Deghuri yižinɗə but there should be a final consonant that gets lost in A, which would give -a as the final vowel in D), is Deghuri. This would probably mean more vowels in some Kharidze, and fewer consonant clusters.

_________________
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

The Ubghuu Kül Tegin inscription again, with massive Cuhbi calquing. Retconning qâàŋ to mean "come out", as in Cuhbi. Still not sure if I'll keep underlying contour tones. Might also change the spreading rules on the tones.

pɛ́ʔ ʂóó ghɔ̀dáʔehąą ghàb riip ghèɻúúwéhąą wáʁààhį̀į̀yùù dzhɛ́p ŋa oʐúʁààhį̀į̀ yiŋgaluu