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

[Zhen Lin]

I created Zhaj (damn. About two years ago, back when I was applying for college), but I haven't kept up with what the project has become since then. So I'll have to spend some significant time reading the wiki and through this thread. I'd like to rework Zhaj, since I kind of half-assed it at the time to meet the deadline (in my defense I was doing UC applications at the same time), but it looks like people have created daughter languages from it, so that might not be cool. Bar that, I'll have to find another corner of the world to work in.

You could rework it subtly, or flesh it out in more detail, as I did with Ayāsthi. (Well, maybe not so subtly, but it should be possible to insert additional sound changes after Ayāsthi to preserve the form of daughter languages.)

[TzirTzi]

Or if you wanted to make changes to Zhaj that would make the daughterlangs unlikely, you could just say that the daughterlangs actually all descended from a slightly different variety of Zhaj than the documented one.

If you created more vocab for Zhaj I might be able to find my sound changes to Aríe and increase its vocabulary too (though it's probably just as in need of renovation/reworking as Zhaj is).

[dunomapuka]

But there's other stuff going on in other areas, especially earlier on in the timeline. If you're interested. Might I recommend a Western language? Or something based on Fáralo?

---

I have remained silent thus far on Legion's script stuff. It is awesome!!! I haven't said anything because I don't think I have anything constructive to add - others can advise better than I.

---

In case no one's noticed, there's some Ndok Aisô grammar up: http://superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php/Ndok_Aisô . Thoughts?

[Cedh]

In case no one's noticed, there's some Ndok Aisô grammar up: http://superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php/Ndok_Aisô . Thoughts?

I like it. Thumbs up for your preservation of the NT middle voice! Also, what you're calling the "antigenitive" looks very similar to the construct state in Arabic (and Proto-Western, FWIW).

Looking forward to see some syntax and the Tsinakan legend (I'm guessing the Ndok Aisô version would be the one that's most often recited, with the Ndok promoting Tsinakan to divine status...)

---

If you created more vocab for Zhaj I might be able to find my sound changes to Aríe and increase its vocabulary too (though it's probably just as in need of renovation/reworking as Zhaj is).

I made a sound change file for Yād at some point, which works with the old version of bricka's GSCA. I don't know if it's compatible with the new version. Anyway, you can use the file to process the extended Æðadĕ vocabulary. I've just posted it at the Yād talk page.

[dunomapuka]

In case no one's noticed, there's some Ndok Aisô grammar up: http://superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php/Ndok_Aisô . Thoughts?

I like it. Thumbs up for your preservation of the NT middle voice! Also, what you're calling the "antigenitive" looks very similar to the construct state in Arabic (and Proto-Western, FWIW).

I thought of calling it that too. I think I got scared because it seems like a Semitic philological peculiarity.

[Zhen Lin]

Mavakhalan also has a construct case, which descends from the bare form of the noun. Where the construct case is distinguished from the others (i.e. in animate nouns), this is because the others were formed by suffixing certain vowel-initial inflected pronouns. This had the side-effect of preserving final consonants which would otherwise be lost, e.g. construct /la/, nom. sg. /lasa/. (Another peculiarity is that the case markers come after the possession marker.) Of course, the construct case necessarily co-occurs with the genitive, e.g. la a-koxað. (In hindsight, the vowel-initial nature of the genitive should have preserved the final consonant in liaison. That would have allowed inanimate nouns to also distinguish the construct case from the others.)

[Cedh]

I've finally completed the coastlines of the long-awaited revised world map. If anyone has objections to some major feature, please say so soon, because I want to move on to painting elevation etc.


The basic map file, with sketched tectonic plates. Equirectangular projection.


A Robinson projection centered 135° further east, so you can get an idea how the continents line up on the other side of the planet.

[Corumayas]

Is there any hope of getting all the new words from Adata & Ayasthi soundchanged to Agaf & Yiaf? I haven't touched Ghaf in a long time, but I'd still like to give it a better lexicon eventually.


Ndok Aiso looks great (as does the still-growing description of Naidda)!

I think either 'construct' or 'antigenitive' is fine; since 'construct' has already been used in Akana langs there's no reason to avoid it. I have a similar issue in PEI though: it has a kind of general-purpose intransitivizing voice-- its meaning seems to cover reflexive as well as passive (and probably reciprocal et al. too)-- which I at first called 'mediopassive', but then changed to 'middle' after realizing that 'mediopassive' only seems to be used in IE studies. I'm not sure that 'middle' is the best name either, but (even after reading up on voice some) I don't really know what else to call it ('intransitivizing voice', while accurate, sounds awkward to me).


On the map, the continents all look kind of small to me... except for Zeluzhia, which is bigger than I expected and somehow clunky-looking-- too rectangular maybe? I don't have any other objections though, and the tectonics look fine (to my inexpert eye).

[Edit: comparing it to the previous map on the wiki, it seems like you've reshaped southern Zeluzhia some, extending it to the southwest; I think it looked nicer before. It also looks like Peilash has shrunk slightly, especially in the far west; but maybe that's an illusion due to the projection or something.]

Also, cedh, is your new avatar picture you?

[Cedh]

I did indeed cut off some parts of SW Peilaš because they were tectonically implausible. Zeluzhia can be returned to its old shape if you want, but I think the new version fits better with the tectonics of Peilaš. (In addition, I've always felt that Zeluzhia should be rather large).

As for the continents looking rather small, I'm getting the same impression. It's for climatic reasons though: If Siixtaguna is meant to be in the temperate zone still and Xšali should not be desert, I can't make N Peilaš much bigger than I have it now. Enlarging the southern part would work though. Or maybe we could say the planet is a bit larger than Earth...?

EDIT: New images...





And yes, the avatar is me.

[Radius Solis]

Honestly, I remain unable to find even the revised SW Peila:sh attractive. Something about having such a big blob hanging off the end there, no matter its shape, is just plain yeurgh. I don't really think the small-continent problem is a problem at all, personally... maybe other continents could be enlarged, but for this one, I'd be happier if the SW blob were reduced to a third of its present size. I'm perfectly willing to be overruled if that's what the group wants to do, I just think that Peila:sh as it stands is aesthetically unattractive.

The small SW continent pair has unnaturally many big spur-islands jutting out along plate boundaries. Realistically, of the three big island groups there, two should be nixed (it doesn't matter which two, but by aesthetically I'd keep the southwestern set and get rid of the others). But that area isn't terribly important at present anyway, so it's not a big deal. *shrug*

Everything else on the map is good by me.


#12 - cool! I'm liking what you're doing with N.A. thus far. I second the kudos for keeping NT's middle voice! I had been slightly disappointed that no trace could be found among the daughters.


Corumayas - yes, Naidda is still growing, but not for long. I'm in the final dash for home plate! I have only two more grammar bits I need to write about: question formation, and modal adverbs. (But I might add more paraphrasis as well.) Then it's the text and a dictionary update, and I will be done!

[Legion]

Unrelated to the present topics, I've had some idea about the possible developpement of the western civs, most notably of the speakers of languages of the western sub-Coastal family (the only thing we know about it for now is that these languages are supposed to be tonal).

I haven't kept track of all that has been said of western civs, and all that follows are only ideas and suggestions – if it's not compatible with already existing material, please tell me so.


Anyway, my idea is that the divided tribes of proto-western speakers on the western coast would be conquered by a more united invader (now to determine who would realistically be able to do that that early in history). The western people would actually manage to absord their conquerors, preserving their language, culture, society and belief system, but not without important modifications and reorganizations.

This would eventually result in a more united people, with a shift toward a more systematically organised political and religious hierarchy. The social structure would gain some flexibility, with a formal disapearance of the status of slave, but simultaneously, a shift toward a more violent culture of conquest toward neighbouring people, parallelising a shift of the religion which would focus much more on cannibalism than its previous incarnations.

That new civilisation would culminate in a small empire leaded by a divine ruler, roughly at the time of the golden age of the by then much more important Ndak Empire. This emperor would leave a lasting impression on his people, to the point of effectively becoming the main divinity of the coastal religion for the next generations.

From there, the coastal empire would slowly grow, progressively conquering many of its neighbour, and would be something akin to both the Aztec empire (practicing cannibalism and human sacrifice) and the Mongol empire (violent, expantionist civilization). Over the course of centuries, with sometimes period of decline then revival, they would end up conquering most of the western plains, stoped only in their advance by the Empire of Athale.

Starting from this point, their empire would start to decline and dismember, but not without having left an important cultural and linguistics impact over the western regions of the Peilaš.

[Basilius]

Hi! I'm new to this project.

Some people may remember me, though, from Conlang-l (same nick) and/or Ardalang (as Basilius2). Perhaps, also from LJ where I am "bc_"/"uxus".

While I'm making my way though the available documentation (very impressive, needless to mention), I'd like to ask for some advice.

First, is anybody interested in some assistance from an untrained lazy volunteer? Like, in fleshing out an already sketched daughter lang? (Is this kind of cooperation an accepted practice, BTW?)

Second, does anybody have any particular plans about the island group that I seem to discern (in the maps just posted by cedh audmanh) ESE of what looks like the Ik'im-Wihe archipelago? I am asking because the area appears to provide many potential refugia that would nicely fit in a plot involving a few successive migration waves. (Does the area have a name, BTW?)

Thanks to everybody who may wish to undertake instructing this nube

[roninbodhisattva]

First, is anybody interested in some assistance from an untrained lazy volunteer? Like, in fleshing out an already sketched daughter lang? (Is this kind of cooperation an accepted practice, BTW?)

I don't have a daughter lang or anything sketched up to do collaboratively, but I would be more than willing to work on something together, perhaps a new group of languages or a Western language.

Anyway, my idea is that the divided tribes of proto-western speakers on the western coast would be conquered by a more united invader (now to determine who would realistically be able to do that that early in history)

I like this idea. What about the invader could be a more organized, as of yet uncreated civ/tribe, perhaps located to the North of the original Western civilization area? I'm new to the project somewhat, so I don't know if that areas been developed at all, but it might be able to work. Another option would of course having the Western tribes unified from within.

[TzirTzi]

Here is the phonology of (Old) Takuña.

My third attempt but I think I'm sticking with this one . I haven't included any examples yet because I haven't yet applied semantic shifts to the lexicon. So here are a few:

PNT imújna /i."mui.n6/ [i~."mu~j.n6], "woman, she", becomes /i."mui.la_L/ [i~."mwi~.la_k!]
PNT ‘iriamukipaaní /?i.4i6.mu.ki.p66."ni/ [?i~.n4i@~.mu~.Nki~.mp6:~."ni], "water-dwelling creatures", becomes /i.ni:.mu.ki.pa:."li/ [i~.ni:~.mu~.gi~.ba:~."li]
PNT kij’mipi /"kii?.mi.pi/, "little finger", becomes /"ti:_L.m:i_L.hi/ ["ti:_k!m_k.mi_k!?.hi]
PNT miarutu /"mi6.4u.tu/ ["mi@~.n4o.tu], "hold in the hand; know", becomes /"mii.nu_L.su/ ["mIj~.no_k!?.su]

Planned features:
-more verbal morphology than PNT
-highly blurred distinction between nouns and verbs as lexical classes
-large sets of situationally-determined taboo lexis having much influence on the history of the lexicon

[Corumayas]

My map opinions seem to be the exact opposite of Rad's. I was thinking of far SW Peilash as a likely original home of humans, so I'm slightly disappointed to see that area shrink or disappear. But that's not very important really. I think we can compromise-- we can shrink SW Peilash if we must, but let's keep the NW lobe larger please! (The revised Zeluzhia does look better to me, too.)

As far as the history-of-other-regions proposals go, I'm leery of establishing any details about them yet, except in rough outline. My feeling is that the Western sphere shouldn't be united politically or culturally-- it's pretty big and geographically diverse. In particular, a major empire uniting the coasts and steppe seems unlikely to me, especially at the early date Legion suggests. Generally I think early states could manage either coasts or interior plains, but had trouble holding on to both. (Also, this is a trivial point, but we already have one early emperor who becomes a god to later generations.)

[Basilius]

OK. The feedback I've received so far (thank you, roninbodhisattva!) seems to suggest that the tennis ball is still on my side

This may mean that some random thought generation is in order.

As I said, the area I am interested in is located to ESE of what I called "the Ik'im-Wihe archipelago" in my previous message (the home of the Isles-speaking peoples, correct? Somebody please suggest a more accurate naming!).

Now, the area in question includes Ttirukũ and a group of smaller islands mostly located to the East of it. The area doesn't seem to be mentioned among the exclusive domains in AkanaWiki. I am not sure if the term "the Ttiruku island arc" which I found in this tread refers to exactly the same area or also includes the islands that lie to the northwest of Ttirukũ. To avoid potential confusion, I am going to refer to the area of my interest as "the Ttirukũ Zone" in this message.

Well, random thoughts, did I mention?

- - - - - - -

(1) I assume for the moment that the area where humans first appeared was Southern Peilaš (rather than e. g. Zeluzhia). Because the biggest continent, and supposedly the home of the earliest urban civilization(s), looks like a better potential counterpart of Earth's Old World.

(2) It is not clear to me how early people could colonize Zeluzhia and the northeastern continent. On Earth, people seem to have reached North America and Australia quite early (Paleolithic?), but this may be irrelevant for Akana's history for various reasons.

For my tentative scenario about the Ttirukũ Zone it is essential, however, that Zeluzhia and the northeastern continent got populated long before the Classical Era (in Akana's common timeline), and this seems to conform to what I've learned so far e. g. about Proto-Isles.

(3) The above probably implies that for several millennia the whole chain of islands embracing the Ik'im-Wihe area and the Ttirukũ Zone worked as (a/the) major pipeline for migration flows. It appears that compared to the dynamics of migration within individual continents (including Zeluzhia and the NE continent) these flows were relatively slow. This may mean that linguistic diversity was considerable at any given moment within those several millennia. It also seems probable that the insular cultures in question at any given moment were increasingly archaic from NW to SE, because most innovations were imported from the "Old World" where broader cultural exchange and denser population provoked more rapid progress. And the archaicity gradient seems to imply that migration along the Insular Pipe was mostly unidirectional, NW to SE.

(4) At some point, however, the above picture had to be drastically changed by two new factors coming into play.

First, the Isles-speaking peoples formed a relatively advanced (and militarily robust) civilization that effectively blocked the NW end of the Insular Pipe.

Second, as population density grew and exchange intensified in Zeluzhia and the NE continent, these two areas formed their own innovation centers.

These changes meant that gradually the Ttirukũ Zone began to look hopelessly retarded as compared to all of its neighbors. An inevitable consequence was that early states or tribal unions of all the three adjacent regions (the Isles-speaking area, Zeluzhia and the NE continent) periodically tried to take control of the islands in the Ttirukũ Zone, and their attempts were partly successful.

(5) Partly, because the landscape did not favor invaders. Invariably, it proved impossible to control every remote island or every valley in the mountainous hinterland. And that meant that every time the autochthons (including the descendants of earlier semi-successful invaders) had some time to adopt new warfare methods crucial for their survival as well as other important innovations.

After a millennium of such repeated invasions the linguistic landscape ought to become extremely complex. The "most original" autochthons (descendants of the people brought by the earliest migration wave, the one that resulted in the initial colonization of Zeluzhia and the NE continent) spoke very diverse languages (ultimately related, but hardly more closely than on the level of a macrofamily). Subsequent migration along the Insular Pipe left over a few other language families, perhaps even more distant from each other genetically. And the invaders of the third period spoke languages or dialects belonging to no less than three compact but not demonstrably related groups.

In short, the Ttirukũ Zone became Akana's New Guinea.

(6) However, all that could not last forever. Regular import of innovations from three different sources had to have an impact. Early states, albeit looking dwarfish compared to their continental counterparts, established themselves, and they didn't welcome new invaders. Despite their incessant local vendettas, they were increasingly willing to unite against all external threats and increasingly successful in repelling invasions.

And there was a factor that completely reversed the situation, propelling the Ttirukũ Zone towards its local Early Classical period. The area was accessible only by sea; therefore, unwillingly but inevitably the invaders of the previous epoch brought their nautical knowledge with them. Each of the minute states of the area, just because of its limited territory, suffered from shortage of this or that resource, which stimulated trade in general and maritime trade in particular. Gradually the Ttirukũ Zone was becoming an accumulator of skills and technologies pertaining to seafaring.

And one day the tiny city-states of the Ttirukũ Zone found themselves in the position of control over the world's most important crossing of intercontinental communication routes. Their role in all external connections dramatically changed from passive to active, then to aggressive. Now it was the population of adjacent continents that looked retarded and militarily weak. Local economy of the islands and local cultural life enjoyed the advantages of established ties with all of the known Oikumene. The extreme complexity of local political life, with its unstable alliances uniting dissimilar systems, complicated by often tense relations with semi-independent tribes that surrounded most of the urban centers, made people from the Ttirukũ Zone prepared to the intricacies of international politics, while the unusual ethnic diversity of their homeland made them immune to culture shocks. On the individual level, limited local resources made engaging in most adventurous undertakings overseas (trade, piracy, coastal warfare, colonization, etc.) a natural and prestigeous way to reach prosperity and authority.

(7) Linguistically the landscape didn't change much during the (region's local) Early Classical period. The city-states did cause a decrease in the linguistic diversity, but it remained considerable. However, some of the changes were very important for the subsequent epochs, from Late Classical on. Namely, the dialects of some of the more influential centers dominating a few less fragile political alliances developed into local lingua francas. Later on the status of every such koine naturally shifted to that of a classical language, in the technical sense of the term: a dead language with no native speakers which is nevertheless actively used in interethnic communication and in writing and serves as the major source of terminology. The existence of classical languages and shared heritage associated with them remained an important factor in the sense of cultural unity that moderated local conflicts and helped local people to cooperate in opposing the external threats centuries later.
- - - - - -

Ehm... perhaps I got carried away a bit...

Anyway. Does the above conflict with anything already agreed upon?

If not, how can this timeline be synchronized with Akana's general one? (I imagine the declines would look more natural when made synchronous with periods of growth in the adjacent regions and vice versa; opinions?)

I also imagine that the languages spoken by the autochthons tend to conform to the standards of a local Sprachbund, which are often violated by the dialects brought by the invaders, which originally belonged to other Sprachbunde. I am going to elaborate on that if the above scenario is approved (or at least not rejected totally) by other people here.

[dunomapuka]

This is very cool. I don't *think* it conflicts with anything, because the Isles sphere is so sketchy. To clarify, you're envisioning the Proto-Isles speakers as the most recent migration wave?

The entire island chain from Lotoka to Zeluzhia has been referred to as the "Ttirukan" (I would prefer "Ttirukuan") archipelago.

Also, what time frame are you thinking for your Early Classical period? Ppãrwak is spoken in this area ca. 0 to 200 YP. Indeed, all the Isles languages that have been documented are spoken in 0 to 200 YP, because of the structure of the original relay game... is the period you're thinking of before or after?

[Radius Solis]

Some of those islands are large enough to easily support a dozen or more languages, given that they're probably fairly mountainous. And of course there will be dozens of minor islands in the group that all could support their own languages too. There's no particular reason that Ppãrwak has to be the only language of the region or even dominate it (although it would be nice to leave it in a relatively strong position).

So I really don't see anything wrong with this either. It sounds pretty interesting, actually!

Also it's very cool we've gotten some new (or returned) people showing interest. A big welcome to Con Quesa, Basilius, and Roninbodhisattva! Please don't hesitate to ask all the questions you need to, to get involved, or to propose anything that suits you.

[Legion]

Basilius > the Ik'im-Wihe archipelago is occupied by one of my con-people, for which I have a revision in the works.

Corumayas > I don't see why we should let other regions in a blurry state now, unless we want them to stay that way forever :/

Also, I was not really advocating unity of the whole western sphere in early time, but more like something like this:

c. -2000: conquest and somewhat unification of the western-coast
c. +500 (thus, much, much later): conquest of the plain

If we really don't want another great empire though, I'm fine with the western-coast staying a small nation passing through the ages, somehow like Korea. But I like my ruler-turning-God idea, because I would take a quite different take on the idea than what happened with Tsinakan.

[Cedh]

Hey, some great ideas to discuss

Legion:
I like most of your scenario for the west, except for the minor issue that 2500 years seems a rather long time for the rise of a single culture. IMHO a multi-period approach would be more realistic, something like 1. the initial conquest that you've sketched, resulting in a small but powerful nation on the SW coast that lasts for 5 to 8 centuries, 2. a dark age lasting 3 to 6 centuries, 3. reunification and the creation of a new kingdom, occupying roughly the same area as the glorified nation of the past, 4. half a millennium of stagnation, 5. with the development of some new technology, rapid expansion across much of the western subcontinent. I would probably have the culture adopt writing only during (or after) period 3, so the mythic past (and possibly the reunification) can become even more idealized.

However, a part of your scenario conflicts a bit with what I've been having in mind: I'm planning a western "high civ" in the mountains, northeast of the Western Bay. They are supposed to be the first highly urbanized culture in inland regions of the west, and due to their location (guarding the only good pass to the Xōron) they dominate trade of the northwest with the Aiwa region. However, I think this trade route should only be established around the time of Zārakātias. At the height of its power in the 5th century YP, this civilisation (which I'm calling Qətlanttaq) suddenly collapses due to a major earthquake. This puts an end to east-west trade in this region, which in turn would contribute to Athalē giving up control of the Xōron around the same time. I was thinking that only on rediscovery of the trade route (9th or 10th century, when Athalē is defunct already), direct contact between the Aiwa and the west would become a regular thing.

Maybe we could fit this together somehow? For instance, after the fall of Qətlanttaq the western empire could take over most of its territory with little resistance. However, conflict with Athalē wouldn't be likely, because with the Xōron pass lost, armies could only cross the mountains via Tjakori or far in the north.

Basilius:
First, welcome!
Second, your scenario looks good, and I'm sure we can fit it into the existing timeline. I'd say the Isles peoples (which came from the NE continent, in case you didn't know that) would have been the most recent migration wave. The "local Early Classical period" could have been triggered by the nautical knowledge of the Fáralo, who started founding colonies all around the Bay of Kasca around 300 YP - some of these could well have been on the more westerly islands of the Ttirukuan archipelago. Legion's culture on Ik'im-Wihé could then be one of the first major regional powers, and its language become one of the linguae francae that you mention.

[Corumayas]

Legion: I see; that makes more sense to me now. I'd still prefer it if your civilization is one of several major Western ones, rather than uniting the whole sphere (even later on). It could still become a major empire though. Also, I think it might also make more sense if it all happens a little later than you currently have it; having your emperor-god be roughly contemporary with Tsinakan, and your classical empire contemporary with Athale and Huyfarah, just seems too simple to me. I'm also still a little skeptical about the coastal people conquering the steppe, but if it happens later in history (maybe in the second or third millenium YP rather than the first), it might be more plausible.

Basilius: Welcome! That all sounds pretty good to me. The Isles sphere doesn't have a detailed chronology yet, so there's some flexibility there. But here, too, I think it might make the most sense if your Early Classical Period is a bit later than the Classical Period of the Aiwa sphere, since we've so far avoided the idea of intercontinental trade during the Huyfarah period.

Legion again: Do you have ideas about the history of the Ik'im-Wihé region?

[Basilius]

Thank you for you encouraging comments, everybody! Before I reply to them, I must clarify a few points.

First off: I simply overlooked Ppãrwak - failed to locate it while searching this thread and AkanaWiki for "Ttiruk(u/ũ)". Very stupid. But anyway.

The idea of the Insular Pipe etc. came to me when simply looking all over the latest versions of maps by cedh audmanh.

To begin with, I only examined the hypothesis that people of the Akana World are of local origin. That is, if for example they are actually humans from Earth brought to Akana by some weird circumstances, then their simultaneous appearance in several areas could be possible etc. But if they evolved locally, there must be a Sole Ultimate Urheimat.

Where was it located? Apparently, we need a big landmass that stretches into the tropics (which seems to exclude the NE continent), and the area of the earliest civilizations must be either included in it or be reachable from it for rather primitive humans (which excludes the continents in the Other Hemisphere). Therefore, either Peilaš or Zeluzhia.

If Zeluzhia was inhabited first, then the NE continent was second, and Peilaš only third, probably with a considerable delay (since crossing the sound between Zeluzhia and Ttirukũ would require navigation skills hardly available early enough, and therefore the colonization of the NE continent must have begun from the continent's SE part, with NE Peilaš ultimately reached much later via the NE continent's SW edge and then the Ttiruk(u)an archipelago). This sort of makes Peilaš an area like Australia or Americas, or maybe the farthest edges of Eurasia. In other words, a region very distant from the home of earliest civilizations.

Therefore, Peilaš itself is a much better candidate. This scenario inverts the order of colonization; besides, the initial colonization of the NE continent and Zeluzhia in this scenario could be near-simultaneous, since relatively advanced humans could reach Zeluzhia directly from the Ttiruk(u)an archipelago. (But we don't need the latter assumption if we allow Zeluzhia to remain retarded for a while, e. g. until it is reached by the expansion of peoples speaking the Isles languages.)

Now, if there were no massive geological changes (e. g. involving additional landbridges that appear and disappear), the idea of prolonged unidirectional migration through the Insular Pipe looks very natural.

Among other things, it seems to leave us a lot of freedom about particular dates for the moment. How early could the migration via the Ttiruk(u)an archipelago start? If we take Australia and N. America as the example - as early as we wish. Why not -10 KY? or -20? or -80, accounting for the fact that Peilaš is smaller then Eurasia (that is, its NE edge could be reached more quickly than Chukotka on Earth)?

This freedom seems important to me, since in any case the archipelago was populated earlier than the NE continent, the home of a rather advanced culture of Proto-Isles.

[Basilius]

A few questions about the toponymy.

The entire island chain from Lotoka to Zeluzhia has been referred to as the "Ttirukan" (I would prefer "Ttirukuan") archipelago.

Thank you! Then, I see AkanaWiki mentioning "the Ttirukan and Tymytan archipelagoes" as territories colonized by Isles peoples. What is the Tymytan archipelago?

Is there an accepted name for Ik'im-Wihe (I used this just because I couldn't find one)?

And, is there a better name for what I called "the Ttirukũ Zone"? (I don't like this name, actually.)

Also, is Zeluzh equal to Zeluzhia?

[Basilius]

Basilius > the Ik'im-Wihe archipelago is occupied by one of my con-people, for which I have a revision in the works.

...and it was them who blocked the Pipe, and then they participated in Invasions... so I really need to know *everything* about them

Do they speak one of the Isles languages? (I assumed they did, but...)
Which way did they come there?
Do you already have a timeline for your people (and for the archipelago)?

Please bear with me, I'll have a lot more questions as I learn any details.

[Basilius]

On synchronization, and various unrelated thoughts.

To clarify, you're envisioning the Proto-Isles speakers as the most recent migration wave?

I'd say the Isles peoples (which came from the NE continent, in case you didn't know that) would have been the most recent migration wave.

It depends. Sure, they (or some of them, e. g. Zele) participated in the Invasions, but that could be much later than the Proto-Isles times. On the other hand, it is them who can save Zeluzhia from becoming too retarded, within the scenario of early migrations that I've just proposed. Then, the earlier they reach Zeluzhia, the better. And Ttirukũ is right in the way.

On yet another hand, my original assessment was that the Invasions lasted for "a millennium", but why not longer?

Also, what time frame are you thinking for your Early Classical period? Ppãrwak is spoken in this area ca. 0 to 200 YP. Indeed, all the Isles languages that have been documented are spoken in 0 to 200 YP, because of the structure of the original relay game... is the period you're thinking of before or after?

Ppãrwak seem to have come during the Invasions. Although the paragraph in the grammar doesn't describe them as militarily advanced or particularly warlike... On the other hand, perhaps the invaders didn't need to be too warlike? if they simply were numerous and lived in bigger settlements than the autochthons... must think...

The "local Early Classical period" could have been triggered by the nautical knowledge of the Fáralo, who started founding colonies all around the Bay of Kasca around 300 YP - some of these could well have been on the more westerly islands of the Ttirukuan archipelago.

Why not? This would mean that their expansion falls within the Invasions, too. I said earlier that the invaders belonged to no less than three different groups, meaning that they came from the NE continent, from Zeluzhia, and from Ik'im-Wihe, but if the area was already reachable from Peilaš, Fáralo would be fourth.

So,

Before the Invasions:

Proto-Isles - -2000 YP

Within the era of the Invasions:

Ppãrwak - ca. 0 to 200 YP.
Fáralo - around 300 YP.

Looks rather coherent up to this point.

But here, too, I think it might make the most sense if your Early Classical Period is a bit later than the Classical Period of the Aiwa sphere, since we've so far avoided the idea of intercontinental trade during the Huyfarah period.

I'd say Early Classical can be moved to a date as recent as it appears convenient. Also, they didn't need to realize that what they were buzy with is properly termed "intercontinental trade": think of some Phoenicians on Earth

There's no particular reason that Ppãrwak has to be the only language of the region or even dominate it (although it would be nice to leave it in a relatively strong position).

I think it must have daughters surviving into the Early Classical Period.

Legion's culture on Ik'im-Wihé could then be one of the first major regional powers, and its language become one of the linguae francae that you mention.

Rather, that could be a daughter of its: the period when the koinai formed was the Early Classical one which put an end to Invasions.

Some of those islands are large enough to easily support a dozen or more languages, given that they're probably fairly mountainous. And of course there will be dozens of minor islands in the group that all could support their own languages too.

Looking at Terrestrian precedents, I'd say that realistically they'd support a hundred languages, if only I don't misperceive the scale of the maps (cedh?). Did I mention New Guinea somewhere before?

But if "realistically" refers to conlanging labor... then, OK, a couple dozens...