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

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Tue Feb 10, 2009 4:26 pm

Radius Solis wrote:- Pronominal prepositions... I started that with Naidda, but I then did it in Pencek too, and IIRC Legion has opted to do something similar in Komejech. So that's three languages, but with a distance gap and a thousand years separating Naidda from Pencek. Still, it might well be an areal feature, especially if the Miwan languages do it as well.

Aθáta also has something akin to pronominal prepositions, although the stress pattern seems to favour an inverse analysis (pronouns that inflect for several locative cases).

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 4:57 am

Corumayas wrote: in Proto-Núalís-Takuña, tense/mood is expressed by auxiliaries

Well, what I had in mind was that the number marking had been borrowed from nouns and applied to participle verbs - which are historically nominalised forms, after all - and that this resulted in aspect. I'd been thinking of changing it to verbal number to make this connection more obvious, actually... Either way, pre-Proto-Núalís-Takuña doesn't have aspect marking.

I could change my conception of it to the other way around - aspect is marked on participle verbs, the morphology is borrowed by nouns and becomes number - but this seems a bit dodgy as participle verbs are only a reasonably recent phenomenon and, as nominalised forms, really shouldn't have any marking not found on nouns.

However, that leaves rather a paucity of features shared by PNT and nearby protolangs..

Basilius · Post by **Basilius** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 11:40 am

Radius Solis wrote: A further development of the aspirates into ejectives occurs in Tlaliolz (for dorsal POAs) and in northern dialects of Ndok Aisô, so this too might count.

Aspirates to ejectives? A bit unusual... Perhaps, aspirated > tense (fortis) -> ejective, and that facilitated by a substrate influence? (That is, indeed a non-coincidental areal feature.)

(Ejective to aspirated would seem easier, e. g. ejective > pharyngealized > aspirated, but that's clearly out of question here.)

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 3:15 pm

Perhaps not so common, but it doesn't seem especially unrealistic. I think I was assuming a glottal reinforcement process on the aspirates in Old Tlaliolz, either arising spontaneously or else a remnant of the old coda nasals (via rhinoglottophilia). The Ndok Aisô ejectives need not have arisen from aspirates directly, they just correspond to aspirates in other dialects; there was an intermediate gemination stage, and of course gemination also normally involves some degree of glottal involvement. (In another regional language a millennium later, Pencek, we can also find a fortis series that has both aspiration and glottal reinforcement.)

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Wed Feb 11, 2009 3:53 pm

TzirTzi wrote:Well, what I had in mind was that the number marking had been borrowed from nouns and applied to participle verbs - which are historically nominalised forms, after all - and that this resulted in aspect. I'd been thinking of changing it to verbal number to make this connection more obvious, actually... Either way, pre-Proto-Núalís-Takuña doesn't have aspect marking.

Verbal number in the sense of pluractionality? That would be cool, and would make perfect sense I think.

I could change my conception of it to the other way around - aspect is marked on participle verbs, the morphology is borrowed by nouns and becomes number - but this seems a bit dodgy as participle verbs are only a reasonably recent phenomenon and, as nominalised forms, really shouldn't have any marking not found on nouns.

I agree. Thinking about it again, if aspect was really fundamental, it would be marked on the auxiliary rather than the participle.

However, that leaves rather a paucity of features shared by PNT and nearby protolangs..

I don't know that that's true. On the one hand, PNT isn't particularly close in either space or time to our other protolangs. On the other, it still shares verb-first order with Proto-Eige-Isthmus and the Edastean langs, and has derived passives and causatives similar to PEI's voice system. Also, the auxiliary construction might be an areal feature as well (as Radius suggested recently), so that could be another connection.

One thing that seems mysterious to me is the word order in sentences with participle verbs: normally I'd expect the auxiliary to stay in the verb slot and the participle to go somewhere else, but you have the reverse. Do you have an explanation in mind for that?

(BTW, I think your date of -800 to -500 for PNT is a little late... I'd put it around 500 years earlier or a little more, so that the NT speakers can be in place already when the Isles peoples get there.)

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 5:01 am

Corumayas wrote:One thing that seems mysterious to me is the word order in sentences with participle verbs: normally I'd expect the auxiliary to stay in the verb slot and the participle to go somewhere else, but you have the reverse. Do you have an explanation in mind for that?

Well, now I remember, what I'd had in mind was that the VP was originally head final, but that when the nominalised verb was reinterpreted as a non-finite verb form (the participle verb) its position (previously a nominal position) was reinterpreted as the basic verbal position. From a diachronic point of view, the finite verb then moves to occupy this position when it isn't already occupied. From a synchronic perspective, this new head-initial position can only be occupied by one word and so when it is already occupied by the non-finite verb the finite verb is post-posed.

However, this ruins the verb-initial similarity. The alternative explanation would be to make the synchronic explanation diachronic: the historical position of the verb is initial. When the participle is reanalysed as verbal, it is fronted to occupy this position and the finite verb is postposed. Still, this doesn't sound as good to me. Any ideas?

(BTW, I think your date of -800 to -500 for PNT is a little late... I'd put it around 500 years earlier or a little more, so that the NT speakers can be in place already when the Isles peoples get there.)

Fair noughs, I shall change it

.

Basilius · Post by **Basilius** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:17 am

TzirTzi > Doesn't your auxiliary position resemble a Wackernagelian one?

(But that would probably imply a freer WO in the protolanguage, to operate categories like "in-focus" :: "out-of-focus" besides/rather than VP etc. .)

- - - - -
(edited on looking over the grammar, from which I should properly have started)

No it doesn't...

Two interesting points that I found in the grammar are:

(1) relative clauses with omitted auxiliary have the same WO as independent sentences minus auxiliary (perhaps implying that everything that precedes the auxiliary was historically an equivalent of a subordinate clause);
(2) heavy constituents are moved to the right of the auxiliary (otherwise sentence-final); this may be a trace of an earlier state where non-final auxiliaries were more common.

I'd say that all that looks like signs of a recent shift to verb-initial syntax from some other typology; i. e., an newly acquired and perhaps areal characteristic rather than an inherited one.

Basilius · Post by **Basilius** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 3:34 pm

Corumayas wrote:(BTW, I think your date of -800 to -500 for PNT is a little late... I'd put it around 500 years earlier or a little more, so that the NT speakers can be in place already when the Isles peoples get there.)

Speaking of which...

Is there an accepted timeline for the spread of the Isles peoples?

The AkanaWiki states that "Most linguists and archaeologians date Proto-Isles to approximately -2000 YP, and the colonization of the islands to c. -1500 YP.". This seems to mean that the Isles dialects (ancestral to the attested languages) began to split around -2000 YP while still in their proto-homeland, and that the exodus started at ca. -1500 YP. But it doesn't appear realistic that all the islands (and Zeluzh) were colonized momentarily and simultaneously.

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 4:24 pm

Hmm. The idea that PNT used to be verb-final actually fits well with the shifts to SOV-ness documented in other northern langs (Isthmus, Qedik). If it was me, I think I'd be inclined to make the true verbs always final; but maybe that's too simplistic. I suppose a development toward verb-initial-ness could be part of a later areal effect spreading from the Ndak sphere somehow?

(FWIW, Radius has said that early Pre-Edastean was meant to be head-final too; I suspect that the Macro-Edastean family became head-initial under the influence of early Eigə Valley langs.)

Basilius: the only definitive statement I know of about the chronology of the Isles family is the intro to the Proto-Isles Grammar. If the "19th century" there corresponds more or less to the first century YP, then the spread of the Proto-Isles speakers begins around -1500 ("the 4th century"), and is complete by about -900 ("the 10th century"). So it takes up to 600 years.

(Hence, PNT should probably break up no later than about -1000.)

Edit: I think there's a wiggle room of a century or so in either direction for these dates; the "present" (i.e. "19th century") of the Isles langs is somewhere between 0 and 200 YP.

Basilius · Post by **Basilius** » Thu Feb 12, 2009 6:51 pm

Corumayas wrote:The idea that PNT used to be verb-final actually fits well with the shifts to SOV-ness documented in other northern langs (Isthmus, Qedik).

Why consider only verb-first and verb-last? IMHO what is stated in the grammar implies something trickier, and it looks like an interesting challenge to take the description as is and try to figure out how such a syntax could emerge.

There is a detail in the rule about heavy constituents that makes me feel that this occurrence of non-final auxiliaries is an archaic trait rather than an innovation. Specifically, it is the restriction about only one heavy group that can be extraposited. (Had the extraposition originated recently from clefts or somesuch, this restriction would need a special explanation.)

If sentences with participle verbs were originally construed as (N[V]SO)Aux with the (N[V]SO) part being properly a nominalized embedded clause, then it appears that head-initial syntax in nominal groups was fixed early enough.

The difference between lexical finite verbs and auxiliaries could be originally one between independent and cliticized verbs, with an explainable tendency to prefer enclisis over proclisis.

The crucial point seems to be why any fronting of the nominal constituents (and subjects in particular) was avoided (or, better, forbidden) with finite verbs on that earlier stage except where the nominal group in question had a participle verb as its head. More than one explanation seem possible, each with its own untrivial implications...

Corumayas wrote: Basilius: the only definitive statement I know of about the chronology of the Isles family is the intro to the Proto-Isles Grammar. If the "19th century" there corresponds more or less to the first century YP, then the spread of the Proto-Isles speakers begins around -1500 ("the 4th century"), and is complete by about -900 ("the 10th century"). So it takes up to 600 years.

Oh, thank you so much for the pointer! (Stupid me, should read introductions to grammars without jumping directly to the linguistic stuff...)

My concern is about Ttiruku. The Ppãrwak people stayed there, and the ancestors of Zele must have lived on the island for some time. The Isles-speaking people(s) of Thumapahìthì must have reached their new homeland via Ttiruku, too. And, looking at Cedh's latest maps, I am inclined to suspect that all the other Isles-speaking groups migrated via Ttiruku and Thumapahìthì rather than jumped to their final locations directly from the NE Continent.

So I am really curious to know which of the Isles languages could leave a trace on Ttiruku, and what they looked like at that moment.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 1:58 am

In Fishermanese news, I've started putting 2 and 2 together as far as the diachronic situation goes. What I'd really like to do is start mapping out isoglosses for the reflexes of the proto-lang's sounds, to better keep track of it. But to do this, I need to have a clear idea about where these people can be fit into the map!

I would like to be able to plop my folks down on a stretch of the coast that isn't too far from the tip of the great western bay, preferably either right at that point or a bit to the south, so that it can be close to the Western high-diversity zone (to maximize availability of its vocab to Western daughters). What's stopping me is that Legion's proposals for the region's history remain of uncertain status. Do the Westerners' territories need to extend fully to the coastline through this whole stretch?

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:45 am

On the third and fourth map of these, I deliberately had the Coastal-Western peoples (blue) pass by that peninsula in the middle of their area. This could be a place of refuge for Fishermanese peoples after possibly being displaced from the areas east of that (i.e. approximately the region that the CW speakers occupy on the second map, which is the region you seem to want as the Fishermanese homeland).

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:57 am

Aha! Thank you.

-------
EDIT

Erk. Timeline mismatch. The last map there is for -1000, and by that time the Fisherfolk still have not reached their peak in their home stretch. That's set for around -800, according to this post. The proto-language is set for -2000, at which time your map's space for them even on the peninsula is already coming to an end...

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 9:38 am

Takuña Lexicon

Grammar almost finished..

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Feb 18, 2009 10:50 am

Okay, I think the best thing to do about the timeline mismatch is just to squeeze it all together anyway. The maps of the Western spread surely are meant to be generalized indications of what regions groups are in, and do not exclude the possibility of non-westerners remaining in some of the colored areas, correct?

The dates can be adjusted to as much as a millennium earlier if it can be made to fit with Legion's work (but to have the technology I want them to have, not more than a millennium, and I'd prefer half that). And the Fisherfolk do not need a whole lot of land area in any case; at the time I'm focusing on, their sphere has already contracted to a several small, separate lengths of the coast, none of them extending more than 10-ish km inland from the shore.

The current plan says that by -600 all these languages are moribund, but it'd be neat to let them hold on for a much longer time down at the tip of the peninsula, or even just the little island there.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 12:26 am

TzirTzi wrote:Takuña Lexicon

Grammar almost finished..

Looks fabulous, though those 7's are really disagreeing with me. What if you just use the IPA glottal stop? And I see you've switched to eng instead of ñ?

Also, have you thought about incorporating loan words? That might interestingly mess with the distribution of phonemes.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:52 am

boy #12 wrote:Looks fabulous, though those 7's are really disagreeing with me. What if you just use the IPA glottal stop? And I see you've switched to eng instead of ñ?

Also, have you thought about incorporating loan words? That might interestingly mess with the distribution of phonemes.

I couldn't decide on <ŋ> vs <ñ>... So eventually I just wrote them in as options in the description of the orthography and used <ŋ> in the lexicon and <ñ> in the grammar. Obviously I'll have to fix this and choose one and not the other eventually, and that will have to be <ñ> really as it's in the name of the language... Still, it's a shame because <ñ> and especially <ññ> aren't very aesthetically pleasing.

I quite like <7> - it's a good replacement for <'>, which is ugly - I could indeed use the IPA glottal stop symbol instead, though that has the issue of being unicode... Has it been used in the orthography of any other Akana languages?

Loan words are next on my list of things to do. This is "Old Takuña" - all of the loan words in it will be highly adapted to Takuña phonology. In later Takuña that won't be so much the case.

Considering loan word adaptation though, here's an issue on which I'd welcome other people's input - Takuña involves a sound change in which, among other things, /p/ is only left (1) preceding /u au iu/, (2) when pretonic where the stressed syllable begins with a nasal phoneme or /l/. Should borrowings preserve this limitation or actively try to patch it?

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 6:18 am

TzirTzi wrote: I quite like <7> - it's a good replacement for <'>, which is ugly - I could indeed use the IPA glottal stop symbol instead, though that has the issue of being unicode... Has it been used in the orthography of any other Akana languages?

Yes, it is used in Proto-Western. And, though I really do like the lexicon as you've got it - it's got a nice flavor - I have to admit I've always found the use of 7 as a letter unpleasant myself.

Should borrowings preserve this limitation or actively try to patch it?

What about taking a middle-of-the-road path? I.e. neither seeking to put /p/ in places it doesn't occur natively but nor nativizing loans to fit? Then you'd get some exceptions to the rule, but not very many - very natural.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:01 am

I've changed <7> in the lexicon and have added about 30 borrowings from Mûtsipsa' - for now taking that middle road, although that leaves the possibility of stopping up the /p/ gap with borrowings later on... I intend for there to be a lot more Mûtsipsa' borrowings at some point.

I don't suppose if anyone knows if Rory's Proto-Isles -> Mûtsipsa' sound changes are available online anywhere? I'd like to have some borrowings to Takuña that preserve archaic Isles features..

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 10:54 am

TzirTzi wrote:I don't suppose if anyone knows if Rory's Proto-Isles -> Mûtsipsa' sound changes are available online anywhere? I'd like to have some borrowings to Takuña that preserve archaic Isles features..

I don't think so, because the changes were what was to be reconstructed in the first relay, and AFAIK nothing really came of that. However, I compiled a list of Mûtsipsa' words with sure Proto-Isles etyma a while back; it's on the Mûtsipsa' talk page.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:14 pm

There was a time, in days long gone by, that Zompist posted his reconstruction of proto-Isles from its daughters. He wrote it up all nice and put it on a web page, which might have some good things to say about Mutsipa' sound changes, possibly, if it's still there. I just can't find the page.

Or we could try to reconstruct it all ourselves now that we have the protolang to compare with.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:12 am

Hmm. Well, if it's a matter of reconstructing stuff then I might leave it for a bit - I've got quite a lot on at the moment and the purpose of this would only be a handful of borrowings. A future addition to the project, methinks

.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:27 am

Well, there's no reason the reconstruction has to be done by you.

To this end, I have begun putting together an etymology list for Mûtsipa' by direct comparison of the lexica. I got as far as the Class II nouns and then thought... waitaminute, do we already have this information somewhere? It seems strange that we don't. But in any case it's worth putting on the wiki. Perhaps in the future it could be expanded into a pan-Isles etymological database.

I can't get the board to recognize the stupid URL as a valid link, so you'll have to copypaste:

http://akana.superlush.co.uk/~akana/ind ... /Etymology

I have not tried to be exhaustive... I skipped a number of words that seemed unlikely to have a direct semantic equivalent in Proto-Isles because they're too specific (e.g. the philosophy terms) and known borrowings. The point is to provide adequate material to reconstruct a sound change list from. We can make it more thorough later if desired.

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 12:13 pm

Already some mysteries are turning up. Possibly due to conlanger error, or possibly due to some kind of mysterious force in the universe we've never known about? Take a look at the following P-Isles/Mûtsipsa' pairs:

dúy - duu (sea)
húy - huu (wind)

So in monosyllables without codas (at least), we see úy > uu. Next, the Isles pitch-accent appears not to matter, as per the next pair:

kuy - kuu (spirit)

but, wait a minute! WHAT IS THIS:

suy - su (dew)
dzuy - tsu (dust)

AND:

quy - 'û (in)

So final uy can turn into any of uu, u, û. The latter might be a based on the adposition being unstressed, perhaps, as there's only the one example I could find. The u-uu discrepancy, however, I can think of no mechanism to account for. Surely it wouldn't depend on sibilancy of the preceding consonant?

Looking now at polysyllables, we also see two outcomes. But not the same two! Instead we see u and zero.

dúduy - duutu (lake)
pumuy - pwu (fish)
wánuy - wen (bad)
hunuy - hun (blow)

Grammatical category may account for the difference here due to morphology, I don't know. The "blow" verb is actually an infixing stem, with the root being hn in Mûtsipsa'.

So... either Rory goofed and "spirit" should have been ku or else there's something very weird going on here.

Basilius · Post by **Basilius** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 1:57 pm

Radius Solis > I'm having similar troubles with Ppãrwak. A lot of splits in sound developments whose conditions I don't understand, and that combined with clear typos mixed in. Not to mention grammatical morphemes (like nominative marker) of obscure origin etc.