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

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 6:07 am

One thing I see that I might like to try with Namidu is: I can has heavy synthesis? Or even poly? I saw it coming in Puoni and chose not to pursue it due to the comparatively short time depth. All it would take is a bit of syntax tweaking to get the AUX and V next to each other again, and some fusion... but alas, I note you have dropped the combined-form pronouns. Bah.

For that matter though, it could even happen in Naidda. Did you perchance have any thoughts along these lines, Zompist? If so then maybe it should be pursued as an areal feature (Zomp's post-Naidda is literally sandwiched between Namidu and Puoni speakers, although situated later in the timeline than them). And if not, then maybe not.

One further note: this is at least the third time now that Akana has resurrected itself from the dead. Would it be too much to hope that a fourth spate of world-building and language-building is in store?

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 6:57 am

Radius Solis wrote:OMG, Namidu looks awesome. I can't wait to see some text and lexicon for it! I can promise with absolute verity that I will toy with deriving a daughter from it. (Whether I get one actually published, and how extensive its description will be if I do, are another question...) Speaking of which, at some point I should return to Puoni. It's been almost a year now.

Thanks

I would love to see a daughter of it (and some sister languages would be great too, if someone will take up the challenge), though I would also greatly look forward to the Second Coming of Puoni...

I put a bit of the Tsinakan text up: http://wiki.penguindeskjob.com/Tsinakan_text
And the whole thing should be on its way imminently (I already had the whole thing written in draft version for a couple months, but now I've revised the auxiliaries and some pronouns a bit, so I'll go through and correct it).

One thing I see that I might like to try with Namidu is: I can has heavy synthesis? Or even poly? I saw it coming in Puoni and chose not to pursue it due to the comparatively short time depth. All it would take is a bit of syntax tweaking to get the AUX and V next to each other again, and some fusion... but alas, I note you have dropped the combined-form pronouns. Bah.

Interesting idea. If you think you can pull it off, go for it! I wouldn't know what I was doing with a polylang. I think that might fit its quirky phonology rather nicely. I enjoy looking at this language becuase typical words look like yeluñɨb and epyotta; I feel like a polysynthetic daughter would be full of ɨppebbadañattsa's and kakɨpyaɫtoppoksiñeb's and other such joyous terrors.

One further note: this is at least the third time now that Akana has resurrected itself from the dead. Would it be too much to hope that a fourth spate of world-building and language-building is in store?

I think we should expect a perpetual ebb-and-flow cycle.

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 10:20 am

Since Radius seems to be back, here a couple of issue I wanted to adress:

-First, given that (1) I really don't like how Dhaleglo is turning and (2) I like Komeyech much more, but it's speaker aren't really doing anything where they are, as a minority language community dominated by Adata speakers, I'd wonder if I could (a) scrap Dhaleglo and (b) put Komeyech speaker on the Daegem island in place of them. Would that create any major historical disturbance?

-The revision of Ayasthi. It's all nice and all, but has the problematic effect of making four daughterlangs out-of-order - standing with the fact that I don't want to derive yet again a language from such a nightmare, and nonewithstanding that Ayasthi is completly unrealistic toward Adata and toward the neighbouring languages (no language evolved from near isolative to almost polysynthetic in that short frame of time - no, not even French), what do we do? I would be rude to Zhen to scrap Ayasthi entirely, so that is not an option, any idea?

jmcd · Post by **jmcd** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:33 am

Legion wrote:The revision of Ayasthi. It's all nice and all, but has the problematic effect of making four daughterlangs out-of-order - standing with the fact that I don't want to derive yet again a language from such a nightmare, and nonewithstanding that Ayasthi is completly unrealistic toward Adata and toward the neighbouring languages (no language evolved from near isolative to almost polysynthetic in that short frame of time - no, not even French), what do we do? I would be rude to Zhen to scrap Ayasthi entirely, so that is not an option, any idea?

Well, since Zhen Lin appears to be active on the board, I'm sure he can discuss Ayasthi himself. I suppose you wouldn't be making any more words for Agaf until then though?

Salmoneus · Post by **Salmoneus** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 5:00 pm

I'm alive. I'm busy with a job, and my conworlding time has been distracted, but I still intend to do things in the future.

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 1:58 pm

Legion wrote:-First, given that (1) I really don't like how Dhaleglo is turning and (2) I like Komeyech much more, but it's speaker aren't really doing anything where they are, as a minority language community dominated by Adata speakers, I'd wonder if I could (a) scrap Dhaleglo and (b) put Komeyech speaker on the Daegem island in place of them. Would that create any major historical disturbance?

As far as I can tell, it just removes one of the four or five nomadic peoples of the Eiwel Gourun. Seems to me it was getting a little crowded up there anyway... I say go ahead if that's what you want to do.

-The revision of Ayasthi....

I admit I haven't compared the old and new versions of Ayasth(i) in detail. Is it possible you could just rederive the Agaf lexicon without changing much else? If it's mostly just a matter of putting a bunch of words through the existing sound changes it shouldn't be too much work. Also, give the realism issue, maybe the dates of Ayasthi should be moved later? I don't know.

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:19 pm

Corumayas wrote:
-The revision of Ayasthi....
I admit I haven't compared the old and new versions of Ayasth(i) in detail. Is it possible you could just rederive the Agaf lexicon without changing much else? If it's mostly just a matter of putting a bunch of words through the existing sound changes it shouldn't be too much work. Also, give the realism issue, maybe the dates of Ayasthi should be moved later? I don't know.

That's not that's simple. The revised version of Ayathi is not just a revision - it's a different language entirely. Added to the fact that Agaf sucks great balls of fire, if I was willing to do anything, it would involve scrapping Agaf entirely and start again from the new version of Ayathi - and each of these steps would have to repeated for each subsequent daughter...

Dewrad · Post by **Dewrad** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 6:28 pm

Radius Solis wrote:One further note: this is at least the third time now that Akana has resurrected itself from the dead. Would it be too much to hope that a fourth spate of world-building and language-building is in store?

Well, after splurging myself on Proto-Western, I've given all I'm willing to until I've finished with my outside conlanging projects. I've shelved at least three until Dravean is in a similar state to Novegradian, so don't expect anything beyond commentary for a good six months or so from me...

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 11:27 pm

Legion wrote:That's not that's simple. The revised version of Ayathi is not just a revision - it's a different language entirely. Added to the fact that Agaf sucks great balls of fire, if I was willing to do anything, it would involve scrapping Agaf entirely and start again from the new version of Ayathi - and each of these steps would have to repeated for each subsequent daughter...

Ah, I see. That would be a lot of work, yeah. I wouldn't actually mind doing Ghaf over, though, if it comes to that... there are a number of things I think I'd do differently if I was doing it now.

On an entirely unrelated note: noticing that the Balanin dynasty has pretty much the exact same dates as the Han (ca -200 to +220), I amused myself for a while last weekend by imagining the history of the Han as if it were that of early Huyfárah. Obviously just copying it directly would be kinda lame (I did basically that with the "thirteenth dynasty of Ngahêxôldod", but that's a much briefer and less important bit of history)... and besides, the Balanin are part of zompist's domain. But it'd be nice to have some more details about them, and the Han seem like a good source of inspiration... there are some good stories there.... Anyway, I thought I'd put the idea out and see if it leads to anything.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 10:10 pm

The KneeQuickie is down due to bandwidth issues. I am disgruntled. I hope this sets itself aright soon. For now, we can continue to powwow here about whatever.

Corumayas wrote:Obviously just copying it directly would be kinda lame (I did basically that with the "thirteenth dynasty of Ngahêxôldod", but that's a much briefer and less important bit of history)...

What did you crib that from? Egypt? A Mesopotamian kingdom?

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 3:19 pm

boy #12 wrote:
Corumayas wrote:Obviously just copying it directly would be kinda lame (I did basically that with the "thirteenth dynasty of Ngahêxôldod", but that's a much briefer and less important bit of history)...
What did you crib that from? Egypt? A Mesopotamian kingdom?

They're the last native dynasty of Babylon.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 11:12 am

I've been thinking a lot about the more peripheral language families recently. Just now I've added a section on Eastern Isthmus to the Proto-Isthmus wiki page, in case anyone is interested in describing Doroh or another of the Eastern Isthmus languages when Corumayas' work on the Eige-Isthmus family has progressed far enough to start with such a thing. I might do so myself eventually, but I leave this open to everyone for now, provided I'll be notified so we don't put in double work.

The sound changes I'm proposing for Easters Isthmus are designed to allow for the reconstruction Radius proposed, leaving all those phonemes more or less intact which were lost in the early stages of Western Isthmus:

b d ɖ dz g > p t ʈ ts k / [-voice]_, _[-voice], _#
l > ɬ / [-voice]_ (swallowing up the fricative component of f s ts)
V > 0 / (m,n,l,j)_C when unstressed
f > w / except (p,m,n,l,j)_
n l s > ɳ ɭ ʂ / [+rflex]_, _[+rflex]
n > ŋ / _[-coronal]
epenthetic stops were introduced between nasal consonants and fricatives: mf ms ns > mpf mps nts
a > o / _C+(o,u) when unstressed
aw ow uw > ow u u / _C, _#
(s)Cj > (sʲ)Cʲ / exceptions: ɬ was not palatalised, and the sequence Cwj became Cuj
jC > Cʲ / _# except that ɬ was not palatalised, and the sequence jw# became ju#
ij uj > ej oj
kw gw ŋw sw > kʷ gʷ ŋʷ sʷ
w > 0 / C_
s > h / _#

Some ideas I have for further developments towards Doroh:

b d ɖ dz g > β r ɻ z ɣ / V_V
creation of front rounded vowels from Cʲ(o,u) and Cʷ(e,i), maybe also from (e,i)w(C/#), as an areal feature shared with Lotoka
creation of nasal vowels from VNC sequences

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 11:38 am

I've been looking at the Isthmus languages page again too. I reorganized the headings so the structure of the page now has some resemblance to the structure of the family.

I've also been having some further thoughts about the diachronics...to start with, I've been thinking about Faraghin /r/ in clusters, and realized that when *s was sandwiched between two stops, both would have turned into fricatives.

We have a lot of wordforms like Far. nirgha "war" from a PI shape listed as *nJVLGZA. The GZ variable includes only *gs and *sg, but in this word I think the ancestor was probably a straight *g, with fricativization provided by the L variable which in this case then had to be */dz)/. The protoform clearly should be narrowed down to *nJVdsgA. And anywhere else we have clusters where both components can be descended from stop+s, we should consider this approach... e.g., *ksdAn would account nicely for khran "guts, boldness". That's a strange cluster to have in initial position, but just **conveniently** there was also a loss of initial vowels! So probably *VksdAn.

This also allows the possibility of fric-fric clusters, e.g. *VpstV -> VfsV. We don't see any of those in the Faraghin lexicon, but we don't have the full sound change history set out either, so these clusters were probably simplified along the way somewhere. This in turn leads me to wonder how many of Faraghin's single fricatives arose not just from stop+s but stop+s+stop, which isn't accounted for in the variables.

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 10:29 pm

Good to see more work going on in the Isthmus family!

In fact, nirgha is cognate with Miwan za:ska "war", which is probably a loan from Ngauro. Ngauro preserves the original vowels most of the time, so the proto-form can probably be further narrowed down to *njadzga.

Radius, if you'd like to edit the Proto-Isthmus wordlist please do.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 4:10 am

I may do that, over the next few days. Do I have permission to invent new roots too? I was thinking of adding at least a full number set, since those are always good for intra-family comparison.

But I don't want to narrow down the P-I variables too much too soon, not before we get some kind of substance established for P-E-I. Every well-defined wordform risks shutting down a diachronic angle... we have too much future stuff already and everything from here on needs to start from the bottom up, or the family will never work out. I propose seeing what we can hack together for a PEI -> PI diachronics based on what we currently know, and then try to fit the current list of PI wordforms into that framework, as a first step.

I think we could probably establish a lot already... for instance we've got a good start in nirgha ~ za:ska from *njadsga (phonemic representation - no /z/ in PI, just voiced allophones of /s/). We previously discussed Ngauro getting its voiced fricatives from *j and *w, so now we've got njadsga > nzadsga > zadska > za:ska, and njadsga > n1DGa > nirGa. What else can we fit into this?

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 10:54 am

Radius Solis wrote:we've got a good start in nirgha ~ za:ska from *njadsga (phonemic representation - no /z/ in PI, just voiced allophones of /s/). We previously discussed Ngauro getting its voiced fricatives from *j and *w, so now we've got njadsga > nzadsga > zadska > za:ska, and njadsga > n1DGa > nirGa. What else can we fit into this?

I've added some more sound changes towards Doroh. Interestingly, it seems to be rather conservative and keeps *njadsga virtually unchanged up to a time period approximately corresponding to the downfall of Huyfárah. The word comes out as [Jatska]. At least if the P-I form still has the first *a...

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 1:15 pm

Radius Solis wrote:I may do that, over the next few days. Do I have permission to invent new roots too? I was thinking of adding at least a full number set, since those are always good for intra-family comparison.

But I don't want to narrow down the P-I variables too much too soon, not before we get some kind of substance established for P-E-I. Every well-defined wordform risks shutting down a diachronic angle... we have too much future stuff already and everything from here on needs to start from the bottom up, or the family will never work out. I propose seeing what we can hack together for a PEI -> PI diachronics based on what we currently know, and then try to fit the current list of PI wordforms into that framework, as a first step.

I agree. It'd probably be better to invent new roots at the PEI level rather than PI. (There seem to be a few Faraghin words that didn't make it onto the list of roots, though... e.g. your example khran from *ksdan. So feel free to add those in.)

I did make a start on consonant and vowel correspondences on the Eige-Isthmus page, which we could use as a starting point for more detailed diachronics.

I think we could probably establish a lot already... for instance we've got a good start in nirgha ~ za:ska from *njadsga (phonemic representation - no /z/ in PI, just voiced allophones of /s/).

I thought it was /dz)/ though?

We previously discussed Ngauro getting its voiced fricatives from *j and *w, so now we've got njadsga > nzadsga > zadska > za:ska, and njadsga > n1DGa > nirGa. What else can we fit into this?

The Ngauro word is a descendent of the older PEI form though, which is presumably a little different than the PI one (though in this case maybe very close). The Proto-Eige Valley form is something like *(n)jadzka (EV has reversed voicing for onset stops and affricates), with onset j > z and coda dz > z > s. (I wouldn't assume the long vowel is necessarily from the deleted [d]; it might be a side effect of the tone of that vowel in whatever Miwan dialect it appears in.)

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 1:17 am

And now for something completely different...

The other day I was thinking about food among the Ngauro. I started looking through the lexicons of the earlier Akana langs to see what kind of domestic plants and animals they name... and before I knew it I was working out:

Early Domestic Animals and Crops of Akana

Ndak Ta has words for dog (tsis), sheep (gaibra), cow (mâisâ), and ox (baus); words for goat (kwir) and horse (nalaròr) are recent loans (from Faraghin and Gezoro respectively). The lexicon also lists two crops, barley (kil) and wheat (borma), which were made into bread (mik). I think we can take this as the basic agricultural suite of the Aiwa valley. (Presumably there are some vegetables too; I'd suggest cabbage relatives, onions, and maybe some kind of bean... but maybe not, see below.)

The related language Proto-Upper-Xoronic, which is rather earlier than Ndak Ta, has words for dog (təte:h) and sheep (əqa:pla), several words for cows (ma:nqəhqə "cattle", əhqə "head of cattle", sumu "cow", qatat "steer", əpah "ox"), and a word for horse (ə:kate:h). (Obviously some of these are cognate with the Ndak Ta terms.) There are no words for grain crops given, but interestingly there's a word for tea (honkim) and two words for milk (le:htu, məpemmə).

Proto-Western, unrelated and slightly earlier still, has words for dog (medza), sheep (mẽγu), pig (γũka), and horse (łãši, which is however described as a wild animal), as well as milk (tʰaya). The important crops seem to be millet (γulši) and beans (wapʰa).

These three lexicons seem to give a pretty consistent picture. Dogs appear to be universal, as on earth. Sheep are also found across the continent, suggesting that they might be the earliest livestock. Cattle are known only in the east (the Aiwa valley), and pigs only in the west; goats seem to come from the Isthmus region. Horses are native to the Western sphere, but are also found in the Gauron Emwel (maybe they come with the early Gezoro, who arrive in the Rathedān midway through the Proto-Xoronic period). Milk is important to the sheep-herding Westerners and the sheep-and-cattle-herding Xoronic-speakers, but not so much to the settled Ndak. Maybe dairy isn't really part of the diet in the lower Aiwa, at least at this early period.

The crops they grow are different too: barley and wheat in the east, millet and beans in the west. (Given this differentiation, maybe it's a good idea to not have beans grown in the early Aiwa valley.) The Xoronic-speakers don't seem to farm, but they know tea-- maybe it grows wild in the Gauron or something. (On Earth, tea is a subtropical plant; but I imagine the Akana equivalent could be temperate instead.)

The tricky thing, in my opinion, is getting all this to fit with the information from Proto-Isles, which is contemporary with Ndak Ta but spoken across the seas to the east. The Proto-Isles lexicon includes quite a number of domesticated animals and crops. We have words for dog (yáwyaw), sheep (míma), goat (sányamh), cow/bull (náwnawh) and ox (huwitzimh), and horse (háwha) and donkey (híwha). (There's also tzúqtzuq "boar/wild pig".) For crops, we have the generic term kuhsiq "crops"; three evidently related words for grains (maqsiwh "barley", maqta "wheat (einkorn), maqtata "wheat (emmer)"); and four similarly related words for legumes (tawpinh "lentil", tawwuq "pea", tawyawan "bitter vetch", tawyimh "chickpea"). And there's mátzi "flax".

The issue for me is this: Proto-Isles has a large complement of basically Mediterranean-type crops and animals, which makes sense if it comes from the west coast of an eastern continent at Mediterranean latitudes. But the crops and animals it has are extremely similar to those found in the Aiwa valley at the same period-- sheep, goats, cows, horses, barley, and wheat. (They even make the same cow vs. ox distinction as Ndak Ta.) Really it's just the donkey and the legumes that are different.

In other words, in about five hundred years, the Isles people will arrive in the west, after crossing the seas from a distant continent... where, somehow, they've been keeping pretty much the same animals and growing the same grains as the Ndak have in the Aiwa valley. This seems to pose two problems: it's not terribly interesting, and it's not terribly realistic. Especially compared to the rather nicely shaded array of similarities and differences across Eigeland, it seems awkward.

Now, we could say that the species these names are given to are actually different; that the animals called "goat", "sheep", "horse", and "cow", and the grains called "barley" and "wheat", in the Proto-Isles-speakers' homeland are different species than the ones that we call by those names in the Ndak sphere. But if that's the case, surely it would be better to give them different names. Besides, it seems unlikely that some of these would have evolved similarly enough on distant continents to even remotely merit being called by the same name: on Earth, cattle-like animals are found only across southern Asia, while wheat, barley, and rye are all native to the same smallish area in southwestern Asia. Grains on another continent should be as different from them as maize is, I think.

Or we could say that they are the exact same plants and animals, which somehow spread across (or around) the eastern seas sometime before the Ndak/Proto-Isles period. But how and why would they spread so far, when most of them haven't made it to the much closer Western sphere? Neither explanation seems very satisfying to me... but I can't think of any others at the moment (short of actually changing the Proto-Isles lexicon, which I think would violate the way we've always done things).

A lot more crops and animals appear in the next generation of langs-- from llamas and olives to elephants and tomatoes. We could piece together a story of all their origins and migrations; I find that kind of stuff pretty fascinating. But it seems like the Proto-Isles issue should be dealt with somehow before moving on... anybody have suggestions?

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:46 am

This is good work, thank you! I'm not sure what to do with these issues at the moment; I'll think about it and post some comments later this week.

---

Something about the Miwan languages:
I've borrowed a few words from the existing wordlist into Pirikõsu, but changed the source a bit so we now have a fourth, Southern dialect (a descendant of Old Eastern Miwan). So far all words I've used have a cognate in other dialects, but I'll likely make up a few more words soon.

Some general changes OEaM > SoM:
r > R
? > h
v > w / #_
word-final obstruents become voiced and acquire a trailing short echo vowel, e.g. *dje:zuf > dje:zuvu (this last change is areal; Pirikõsu also inserted vowels after word-final consonants around 500 YP)

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:49 am

The agricultural picture of Eigeland does fit together pretty nicely, and there's a bit more to it than just what you've gleaned from lexicons - though you have reconstructed a lot, and all of it consistent. Dewrad and I have discussed agriculture several times over the months and years, trying to keep everything consistent. Somewhere around here I've even got dietary info for the Xsali.

But I don't know what to about proto-Isles either... we never tried taking it into account before. Neither transmission nor independent domestication of these crops and animals seems a very realistic approach given the constraints you mention (among others). So in lieu of better ideas I guess my vote - for now - is to continue sweeping the problem under the carpet.

I'd be interested in seeing Sal's input on the problem, if he's around.

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:07 am

Radius Solis wrote:The agricultural picture of Eigeland does fit together pretty nicely, and there's a bit more to it than just what you've gleaned from lexicons - though you have reconstructed a lot, and all of it consistent. Dewrad and I have discussed agriculture several times over the months and years, trying to keep everything consistent. Somewhere around here I've even got dietary info for the Xsali.

Oh, cool. I'd love to see what else you've got, especially if it has bearing on the Eige-Isthmus area and the Ngauro. This topic might merit a Wiki article of its own eventually, no?

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:34 am

I'm not sure how much, if any, of the material of my discussions with dewrad are actually on my hard drive in the form of text. Most of it is scraps in our memories. But I do have a description of Xsali cuisine, roughly temporary with the Daiadak:

I once wrote:The Xsali have a long and well-developed tradition of varied and strong-flavored cuisine. Creative use of seasonings is among the high arts of the Empire, and the nobility and other well-to-do people are famous for their enjoyment of food. However, it should be noted that the common person has a more modest diet, with meals often consisting of no more than rice, bread, or occasionally meat. More elaborate dishes are served on special days and when there is an abundance of ingredients, and more often for the rich.

The mainstays of the Xsali diet are rice, sorghum, millet, sweet potato, onion, duck, and fish. Rice is typically eaten steamed, while breads are made of sorghum and millet. Sweet potato, onions, and meats are most often fried or occasionally baked. These things form the backbone of the diet of commoners and are always seasoned.

The six primary seasonings common to all Xsali cuisine are cinnamon, ginger, hot chili peppers, lemon, cardamom, and sugar. Garlic, cumin, kola, and sage are also common in many parts of the empire.

This description was followed by a few broad recipe descriptions that in retrospect I find more dubious than interesting. I mean I could see trying cinnamon-baked onions, but fried lemon slices??? What was I thinking?

The only one that actually sounds good to me: "Popular in the city of Ne is a dish of spicy roast duck, served over a bed of rice or sorghum that has been cooked in coconut milk and flavored with a little sugar and either cinnamon or lemon juice."

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 1:56 am

Random thoughts at this time:

1. We've been using the term "Eigeland" but I've been wondering what the Akanians call it. They don't all use the same term, obviously. I figured the Fáralo might be the first to use a term for the continent. If our term is a calque of theirs, it might be Eigə-laš, though the Namɨdu reflex would be *Yogłas which gives me a serious "ew" reaction. So maybe it's something more like "The Greater Eigə [Valley]"...

2. I'm putting what information I have on Ndok Aisô 2.0 on the wiki: http://wiki.penguindeskjob.com/Ndok_Aisô. Right now this is the sound changes and phonology. What's there is still subject to change, but probably only small adjustments. I wouldn't expect any grammar for a while, though -- I should focus on getting the Namɨdu syntax up.

3. Did any of us ever produce a wordlist for Tlaliolz? (The only thing online at present is that ''Adasi'' is cognate to ''Ombási''.) Some words may find their way into Namɨdu.

4. Radius's Ne duck dish sounds like a combination of Beef Rendang and Peking Duck, and it's making me hungry.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:58 pm

boy #12 wrote:3. Did any of us ever produce a wordlist for Tlaliolz? (The only thing online at present is that ''Adasi'' is cognate to ''Ombási''.) Some words may find their way into Namɨdu.

The only known Tlaliolz words, aside from the name and the Adasi, are the 24 that made it into the Puoni lexicon. Here they are:

falzam - birch
k_>eomun - daisy
q_wots)feloz - flight, exodus
q_wots)fi - to flee
q_>utK)a - sack
li:k_>lits)a - ash (tree)
lo:flea:ts)a - ring
mak_>a:t - hat
meotK)o - to freeze
me:tK)atso - shoe
moyana:ta - ??? (definition is missing)
naok_wi - fur
nazwa: - wren
na:sqak - pain
setiek - longbow
su:zats)a - press
tayolam - bronze
teats)i - arrow
tasts)efa - tin
tats)tK)ik_> - shirt, tunic
tiliozo - principle, conviction
toezo - to pack
tK)eyo:k_>a: - blue jay
tuq_>antis - gemstone

This seems sufficient to reconstruct a phoneme inventory. Thoughts about it:
* No /p/ occurs in the list. We could posit it, but I kinda like the idea of the /f/ actually being [p\] coming from erosion of former *p. The [p\] realization is supported by pre-Puoni dropping the sound from loans despite having had /f/ in its inventory at the time.
* Ejective and labialized versions of /k/ and /q/ occur - so it seems reasonable to asume there would also be a set that are ejective plus labialized, despite their not appearing in this list. Or maybe these just never arose.
* I've listed vowel sequences that are known to occur, but they may not really be phonemic diphthongs if the phonology allows vowels to occur freely in hiatus.
* The only voiced obstruent is /z/, which probably does not represent a purely voicing-based contrast with /s/ since voicing is not contrastive elsewhere. Instead the /z/ may have been rhotic-like, or differed from /s/ in precise POA, or in apicality/laminality - or any combination of these.
* There is no evidence here of any /N/ or /N\/ but they might simply not occur in these particular words.

This gives us:
(p) t t_s t_K k q k_w q_w k_> q_> (k_w_> q_w_>) p\ s z m n (N N\) l w j i e a u o i: e: a: u: o: (ie io ea eo oe ao)

Further notes:

* The note from which we get "Adasi" (cognate with Ombasi) came from the Ndak era. So there is no particular reason to believe that Faralo-era Tlaliolz, from which the above wordlist comes, retained a /d/.
* NT was supposed to have arisen from a parent stock which had uvulars; the nasal vowels came from loss of a former */N\/, and a former */q/ was supposed to have merged with /k/ in pre-Ndak. So I'd be willing to bet that the uvular stops are retentions, not innovations.
* Where did the ejectives come from? I couldn't say, but here's one possibility. I see an /nt/ cluster in the list, but no clusters of nasal plus dorsal stop. So perhaps the old */Nk/ and */N\q/ clusters are the source of /k_> q_>/ (a similar development to Adata's getting aspirated stops from the same clusters). Given the frequency of /Nkw/ in NT though, if this is indeed the origin of Tl. ejectives, I would definitely expect to see some /k_w_> q_w_>/.
* Where did the /tK/ come from? I have no idea whatsoever.
* It should be noted that Ombasi was not a single root, but a compound of omo+dasi (mother+goddess). So we don't need to posit a POA switcheroo in Tlaliolz, as its /d/ in Adasi is original. It was NT that had the unusual rule of stops assimilating to prior nasals (this is why NT -bu has reflexes of -du and -gu, or similar, in various daughters). And further, it is likely that only the -dasi/-basi portions are directly cognate, with the Tlaliolz a- not being related to omo.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:10 pm

Oh, a note about Ndok Aiso: ghur's metathesis of initial CV into VC is actually not unattested on Earth. In pre-Nahuatl Aztecan, CVCV VCCV (e.g. teki

etki) occurred as a regular sound change.