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

kodé · Post by **kodé** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 6:26 pm

@ Dewrad: How soon are you going to have the culture stuff for Proto-Western? It'd be nice to have a base for Gezoro/Tjakori cultures, if only to have them line up with future Western speakers.

Dewrad · Post by **Dewrad** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:44 am

Well, due to the workload I currently have from university, I'm not going to commit to any time before the 15th of this month. Before the end of this month, though.

How's the language coming?

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:03 am

I've just realised that while I might be able to do a publishable amount of work on syntax and complete the sample text soon, the lexicon is likely to take forever. I may need help there. It's been... 2-3 weeks since I started working properly on proto-Peninsular, and I only have 50 roots. I admit I currently have 142 entries in the lexicon, but that's because there are separate entries for singular/plural/exhaustive, different verbal aspects, various derivatives... Perhaps I should resort to some kind of random word generator. Hmm.

*xar-r-u pihi niç, larut thu sunax niç, thuri-ar-xa pihi sumaç thu-thuri-sk-u mta titi-sk-i mn fiksa (h)am-mn thuri-tç-isk-u.
be-PTCP-PHASE day CIRC, ocean LOC.GEN beach LOC, fisherman day whole PF-fish-PAST-PHASE INST small-Ø-PHASE NEG fish ACC-NEG fish-PF.RESULT-PAST-PHASE.

One day, on the beach by the sea, having fished the whole day, a fisherman caught nothing but a small fish.

Reflex in a possible mainland Peninsular language:
ˈhɑrru ˈpʰiːniʔ | læˈruttʰu̥ huˈnɑːniʔ | tʰuˈrærr̥ʰɑ pʰiˈimdæ ˈhumɛʔ tutʰuˈrissu‿mdʌ tsiˈtsissi‿mnẽ ˈçikʰsæm‿mnẽ tʰuriˈtʰissu
And perhaps a representation of its orthography...
ἅρρυ φίνἰ, λᾳρύτθὑ ὑνάνἰ, θυρᾴρῥα φῖμδᾳ ὕμἠ τυθυρίσσυ-μδο ϛιϛίσσι-μνεͅν ἵξᾳμ-μνεͅν θυριθίσσυ.

Dewrad · Post by **Dewrad** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:16 pm

Zhen Lin wrote:I've just realised that while I might be able to do a publishable amount of work on syntax and complete the sample text soon, the lexicon is likely to take forever. I may need help there.

When I did Proto-Western, I faced a similar problem, so I used Phar's wordgen script, created 500 or so roots and then matched them to the definitions of the long form of the Swadesh list (which I tweaked here and there), making use of derivational processes along the way to expand it.

kodé · Post by **kodé** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:19 pm

Dewrad wrote:Well, due to the workload I currently have from university, I'm not going to commit to any time before the 15th of this month. Before the end of this month, though.

How's the language coming?

Ditto on the college workload, and datewise. I've been working on Tjakori so far, but I should be getting started on Gezoro by about the 15th.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:42 pm

Radius Solis wrote:Yep. And I think that's pretty much officially the last available slot, too. Pretty much everywhere else that Ndak Ta may conceivably have spread to that isn't occupied by something else has been covered now:

1. Huyfarah - Faralo
2. Kasca - Naidda
3. Rathedan - Adata
4. Lasomo - Ndok Aiso
5. Across the N. mountains - Qedik
6. Dagaem Islands - Dhaleglo
7. Xoron Eiel - ??
8. There is no 8

So that's it for potentially-major NT branches. There is still room for isolated small daughters spoken by relatively few people in various nooks and corners, and of course dialects of existing daughters, but that's it.

In response to this, I would strongly advise that somebody redo the language in Lasomo. Ndok Aiso has kind of a nooblang look to me -- there's no grammatical information on the page, and in some way the language just doesn't fit with the other NT daughters. It doesn't look like an Edastean language. The place names have all ballooned to absurdly long length that doesn't compare with their Adata and Fáralo cognates, for example. And I'm not clear on how anything is pronounced. As I see it, our options are as follows:
a) As had been proposed a while ago in this thread, keep Ndok Aiso within the internal history but overrun the region with Adata-speakers or something.
b) Completely scrap the language and design a completely new one.
c) Scrap the language, but incorporate touches from the original conception into the new one.

If we go with either b) or c), the goal of the new language should be that it fits on a plausible continuum between Naidda or Fáralo on one end and Adata at the other, though obviously it will have its own independent quirks. If I'm not mistaken, Buruja needs a local language as well, and this should be conceived as an intermediate between Naidda and the new Lasomo-language.

This is what I advise, though it should be a group decision. What do you think?

Dewrad · Post by **Dewrad** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:50 pm

boy #12 wrote:This is what I advise, though it should be a group decision. What do you think?

I would probably favour option c, myself. It would be an interesting challenge as well to identify common developments in Adata, Naidda and Faralo and extrapolate from there.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 3:53 pm

Ndok Aiso... I don't know. Scrapping the language entirely feels a bit mean to ghur, who probably did what he could, in good faith. I mean, I agree about the language, really. Looking over the lexicon gives me the sense that outcomes were picked somewhat at random, or at least are the result of wildly implausible sound changes; the lack of any grammar or text whatsoever is a substantial problem, and no, it doesn't really fit in with the other Edastean languages.

All of that said, I think Ndok Aiso has a charm of its own; one thing ghur succeeded in was producing a wordlist with a very distinct feel to it. While I didn't much care for it at first, the feel of Ndok Aiso words has grown on me a lot and I would be sorry to see it replaced outright. I guess I've come to the conclusion that Ndok Aiso's dubious developments are a price I'm willing to pay in return for getting to have names like Axholtseubeu and Ngahêxôldod on the map. But that's just me...

So, I propose option d) - reconstructing what can be reconstructed of the language's sound changes, modifying this s/c list to the extent needed to make it consistent and at least halfway realistic, while hopefully not losing too much of its personality, and then re-deriving the words... accompanied by creating a grammar that fits these diachronics. So basically a more "true to original" version of option c.

-------

The language of Buruja around the time of +100 YP is supposed to be very divergent dialect of Naidda with a lot of influence from Ndok Aiso. If someone wants to take up the challenge of that, that's cool, but I'm not sure if there's much more room in the history after that for it to have any daughters. After all, it's a single, unitary citystate in the middle of a huge plain with little in the way of natural defenses, dominated by the Huyfarah empire and later becoming a client state of it; linguistic replacement by Faralo strikes me as highly likely. (This contrasts with the other client state, Kasca, in that Naidda's speakers have a much larger population, spread over much more land area, and with the delta residents well-shielded against molestation (you'd have to be nuts to send an army into a huge fetid ever-shifting mire))

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:30 pm

For Ndok Aiso, I'm also in father of reconstructing what sound changes can be reconstructed, change it so that it becomes somehow realistic, and flesh out a language from that, with grammatical features midway between Adata and Naida.

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 4:35 pm

I'd support option d) too... but I don't think I have the time or patience to work it out in detail, and I wouldn't be extremely surprised if no one else did either. On the other hand, though the sound changes appear to be pretty bizzare, they might not turn out to be all that complicated. Cf. Latsomo > Axôltseubeu: the change CV- > VC- in the first syllable, while weird and maybe unrealistic, is apparently perfectly regular; then we have /m/ > /b/; and finally pretty much every vowel breaks, in this case giving /a/ > /a?o/ and /o/ > /eu/.

(Note that <x> is /?/, as are morpheme-final <t d>; so, for example, the name I made up for one of the kings, <Roit-neheu>, is something like /roi?.ne.heu/, and could also be spelled <Roixneheu>. I have no idea what the circumflexed vowels represent, though.)

Radius, I'm wondering: in Ngauro and Ndak Ta times the delta is supposed to be pretty much the center of civilization, but later you're portraying it as a barely inhabitable swamp. Is your idea that it started out as good agricultural land and became swampy later?

Post by **zompist** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 5:32 pm

I rather like Ndok Aiso's wordlist. It definitely has a strong flavor, and one that looks very unlike IE. And some thought has obviously gone into the glosses.

Some of the words seem ungainly, true. But that's not necessarily un-naturalistic. (Taking a look at my numbers list, there are a surprising number of languages with 5-syllable words for 'one', and at least one with 6.)

Sometimes in conworlding the best thing to do with an oddity is to embrace it. (Otherwise conworlds will all tend to look the same.) Perhaps there's some reason the Ndok like names like Oigop'oibauxeu.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 8:17 pm

Corumayas wrote: Radius, I'm wondering: in Ngauro and Ndak Ta times the delta is supposed to be pretty much the center of civilization, but later you're portraying it as a barely inhabitable swamp. Is your idea that it started out as good agricultural land and became swampy later?

Some of the discrepancy here lies in the conflation of "Kasca" with the river delta in its center... often it has not seemed important to go into detail about what things happen where. But it's worth doing once, so here we go:

The greater region of Kasca/Kasadgad is divisible into three zones: the delta, the delta fringes, and the nearby associated lands.

The "center of civilization" from Ngauro and Ndak times consisted primarily of the fringe areas of the river delta: the land between and around the branches of the Aiwa in the area where it's splitting up, plus some of the islands connected to the delta that weren't formed from it. These areas are relatively stable and definitely prime farmland. However, they are still occasionally prone to floods and reshaping, depending on how well behaved the river is. Parts of it are always drying out and becoming farmable while other parts are always getting eaten away by the river or soaked until useless for farming, etc., just at a slower rate than happens in the delta proper. Cities are generally able to hold their own in this zone.

The "associated lands" include: the banks and nearby areas along a short stretch of the lower Aiwa before it begins branching; the lands across the bay to the south (where Pawe is), a little of the land north of the delta up to the Huyfarahan city of Miedu, and the nearby offshore islands. The agricultural value of these lands is somewhat lower, although still generally fertile. But these areas are part of Kasca more on a cultural and political basis that on a geo/ecological one, as they tend not to be swampy and don't have to worry much about the behavior of the river.

The central delta zone, meanwhile, requires a little courage of its inhabitants - but it's certainly not uninhabitable, just problematic. And it's also the most interesting. Through most of known history, no one river channel connecting to the sea has been large enough to be navigable, save for when canals have been built. Instead the river just branches and branches until at the coast you mostly just get continuous swamp rather than channels and islands. Inland from the coast, the delta is characterized by a patchwork of dry-ish islands separated from each other by river corridors. These corridors range from sizeable branches of the river down to broad muddy troughs with little flowing water; but all the above are choked with silt and thick vegetation. Hundreds of the islands are substantial enough and dry enough to be at least partly farmable, and some can host permanent towns, but frequent shifts of the river channels leave all of the above at risk of floods and crop ruin. Travel between delta islands is mostly by water and there are few permanent roads. And the usefully dry islands don't form more than maybe a quarter of the delta's land area anyway. Nevertheless, a substantial population has done its best to live in such conditions for millennia, due in part to the year-round availability of food for comparatively little effort. Small fields and garden-scale agriculture combined with spending a couple hours a day hunting a turtle or collecting crawdads, or catching a few (insert unspeakably ugly large insect here) or just plain fishing, and you're good to go.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 1:31 am

For anyone who might take an interest in revising Ndok, I've traced a few existing NT > Ndok changes.
âka > aheu
alnia > wôldeueu
asa > euseu
omo > eubeu
idâu > eudau
sa > aisô
lats > ôlts
lêtsau > lîtsexoi
dempi > dîfeu
daing > daig
tsis > tses
Tsinakan > Itsdehad
sau > es'oi
sai > aus'eu
sab > sob
kek > kaik
mbop > maibôp
mpag > mpog
Ndak > Ndok

Deriving any coherent SCs from this would require all sorts of changes, but some interesting ideas are the extensive vowel breaking, and different results for vowels in open and closed syllables.

Certainly I can't complain about vowel-breaking: In my forthcoming Fáralo-daughter, the name of the river Eig@ is now Yogga!

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:50 am

boy #12 wrote: Deriving any coherent SCs from this would require all sorts of changes, but some interesting ideas are the extensive vowel breaking, and different results for vowels in open and closed syllables.

Well, it's not that crasy. In the last daughter of Ndak Ta I'm working on, the Ndak Ta diphthong *ai can have 5 different reflexes according to its original phonetic environment > /je/, /e/, /ei/, /i/ or 0.

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:31 pm

Perhaps we could say that most of the broken vowels in Ndok Aiso are neutralised or re-monophthongised in unstressed environments? Hmm.

Anyway, I think I have enough proto-Peninsular syntax now to be ready to move on to the next stage: composing the sample text. But please point out any glaring lacunae...

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 1:58 pm

Some of them may not be broken vowels - maybe <eu> is /2/, for instance, or /3/?

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:20 pm

I've just had a startling realization: given some of the historical changes I'm considering for the Miwan languages, Miw and Ferogh may actually be cognates! In Miwan, I'm thinking proto-vowels *e *o would become *i *u; if we posit a proto-Isthmus form for Ferogh like *fejog-s or *s-pejog-s, we can imagine an early Miwan cognate *m-fijug or *m-pijug (positing a nasal prefix of some kind)... with lenition of the final *-g and deletion of the consonant after *m-, voilà, Miju...!

Edit: also, I'll be sure to create a Ngauro word glossed "unspeakably ugly large insect".

Dewrad · Post by **Dewrad** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:46 am

Corumayas wrote:I've just had a startling realization: given some of the historical changes I'm considering for the Miwan languages, Miw and Ferogh may actually be cognates! In Miwan, I'm thinking proto-vowels *e *o would become *i *u; if we posit a proto-Isthmus form for Ferogh like *fejog-s or *s-pejog-s, we can imagine an early Miwan cognate *m-fijug or *m-pijug (positing a nasal prefix of some kind)... with lenition of the final *-g and deletion of the consonant after *m-, voilà, Miju...!

Now, the question comes- what does *(p/f)ejog- mean? (It'd be cool if the *m- and *s- were augmentive/diminutive suffixes, giving "The Lesser Pejog" and "The Greater Pejog".

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:54 am

On the one hand it's definitely cool to be able to find diachronics to link the two names. On the other, I've begun over the last year to start shuddering anytime two related conlangs are given "names" that are cognates. Is "English" cognate with "Deutsch"? Or "Francais"? No.....

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 4:20 am

Ah, but Dutch is cognate with Deutsch, and Romanian is cognate with Roman, and of course Gaeilge is cognate with Gàidhlig. Nonetheless I am inclined to agree with you. It is unfortunate that the vast majority of the Edastean languages have names that are cognate and directly traceable to Ndak Ta.

In other news, I have composed the sample text. But the original fable was a bit short, so I had to pad it somewhat. The Fisherman and the Fish. The words seem to get rather lengthy for a "primitive" language, don't they.

One day, a fisherman, after fishing the whole day on the beach by the sea, fished up naught but a small fish.

The fish said thus. “O fisher, I am naught but a small fish. In the sea, there are many bigger fish. If you return me to the sea, would I not grow bigger? When I have grown bigger, would I not be better to eat? So therefore, please return me!”

The fisher, having looked to the heavens (= thought), said thus. “Nay, nay, O fish. You are caught now. Were I to return you, I may not catch another. So therefore, I will not return you.”

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Wed Dec 05, 2007 11:34 pm

I know what you mean, Radius; and I didn't plan to make them cognate at all. (Cognate language names/ethnonyms aren't all that uncommon in the real world, but I think they're usually found in quite closely related languages... e.g. Lakota, Nakota, Dakota, which came up in a thread not too long ago.) But I've been reading about Tibeto-Burman for inspiration, and those languages have a couple of very important proto-prefixes *s- and *m-... so I had this unexpected brainstorm.

*Pejog/*fejog might just mean "people" or "tribe", or be an unanalyzable name (like Ndak).

Proto-Isthmus *(V)s- (which must have been fairly frequent, given the amount of *s-induced lenition of initial stops in Faraghin) is probably related to (or identical with) the prefix *as- that marks the genitive/accusative case on pronouns. I think of it as a kind of relational marker: if the (pro)noun it's attached to stands next to a verb, it's the verb's object; if next to a noun, it's a genitive possessor. Attached to a verb, it might be used as a kind of subjunctive/relative marker, or maybe form causatives or something.... But anyway, it's easy to imagine an ethnonym being used in genitive constructions so much that that form became generalized: "to be (one) of the Pejog" could be the normal way to phrase ethnic identity.

I have no idea (so far) what an *m- prefix might mean, though... if it turns out not to fit, I'll drop the idea. But I enjoyed discovering that two names that appear so different on the surface might secretly be cognates.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 6:08 am

FYI - I've been thinking about Xsali lately. Increasingly so.

One of the things that first intrigued me about it was the fact that, by sheer accident, the situation arose that we have a name on a huge region of the map that has just sat there, as if permanent, through several millennia of Akana's maps. And that's all we've known, save that they're supposed to be rich, huge, alien, and ancient.

Do we have an Earth analog to this apparent monolith? It doesn't seem to fit the European model of many small nations and mere-millennium-long empires shifting around and breaking up and reforming all the time.

But yes - yes, we do have such a monolithic analog.

China...........

Xsali is just too huge for me to claim its entire realm and history to myself as an exclusive domain. My challenge here is to build mostly framework and leave open enough areas that other people can contribute to Xsalad - its regions, chunks of its history, what minority peoples and languages are present, and so forth. Yet so, I've got tons of ideas for it, some of them vaguely paralleling China, or India, but far from cloning either:

* Elevated cities (well, a few anyway): instead of the plain old city-wall approach to defense, some Xsali cities have landfilled behind their walls until the whole central city stands well above the surrounding ground; in at least one city multiple levels of elevation occur.

* A history stretching deeply into the far and poorly-recorded past, including a substantial body of poetic texts with religious/philosophical significance (which as an originally oral tradition predates the adoption of writing).

* A long list of controlling dynasties, interregna, and periods of waxing and waning imperial power and cohesion; dozens of wars both internal and external. Dynastic wars, schisms, desert invaders, earthquakes, secret cities, flooding rivers, centuries-long construction projects, oh my!

* Hell, I've even been thinking about their cuisine. Think: elements of Indian and Polynesian, with sprinkles of other places and some bizarre antics of my own invention (cinnamon-fried onions wtf?). Rich and spicy tastes all around. I may even post recipes sometime for the lulz, but I'm not sure I have the gustatory courage to actually try them first. Mostly I just want to add some flavor to the Xsali cultural flavor.

* To help dispel some of the Asian aura I just cultivated: I'll make it official and confirm that the rumors of Classical Xsali being a click language are true. I'm even hoping to do some research into Khoisan grammar for this project. Eventually.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 6:31 am

Holy crap. That sounds like it has the potential for awesomeness. Some comments/questions:

1. When is 'Classical' Xsali situated in relation to the history of... the main area we've been working on? (I guess it needs a continent name.)
2. Maybe the <X> in 'Xsali' should represent a click.
3. Is 'Xsalad' the name of the country, and 'Xsali' the language and ethnonym?
4. You should think of a bunch of really really weird grammatical structures and phonological elements (besides the clicks) and pick a few out of a hat.
5. Furthermore, you should throw some other dramatically non-Asian cultural element into the works to heighten the sense of the unique.

---

My update on further developments in Huyfarah will be soon. After I've announced this cultural and historical groundwork I will reveal where my descendant language is situated. And then, I can begin to show what I've done on the language itself.

What I can reveal for now, is that there is a vulgar rhyming expression that my con-people like to call people they don't like: byopsa na-gyopsa.

It means "sheep cunt."

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 7:09 am

Hah, "sheep cunt".

To answer your comments:
1. I'm setting Classical Xsali at roughly contemporary with Adata and Faralo et al. This way there's room in the future for derived daughters should anyone want to do one, but also room for me to borrow a few words from existing languages.
2. Actually I've got the click representation worked out already. X is just plain old /x/, sorry to have to say. For the four click POAs (everything but bilabial) I'm using the symbols ! | || = on the basis of their resemblance to the corresponding IPA, though I recognize they aren't exactly pretty.
3. Yes, you're right about the name usage. Xsalad is the noun for country; Xsali is the adjective for everything to do with it, and by extension the noun for its people and language. However, these terms as we know them were borrowed into Adata via the Tjakori language and are not necessarily the exact wordforms the Xsali themselves use.
4. Not sure. We'll see.
5. Definitely - I've got my eyes open for good possibilities. But I haven't found anything else that fits quite yet. Suggestions welcome!

aardwolf · Post by **aardwolf** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:58 am

I have a suggestion for #5 above -if you're going all African on it- and that is body modification rituals. I know they're present in Asia somewhat (more specifically, the southeast island peoples of Asia / Papua New Guinea area and all that), but Africa has weird and wonderful things like tribal scarification, those Palele lip-plates, distinctive use of colour in their ornaments (red seems to feature a lot). It seems that these people are quite religious - maybe some of the above could be incorporated into their religious rituals. Or maybe they used to be part of rituals, but fell out of practice, and remnants are left in the language (I'm not quite sure how this would be done exactly, but just an idea).