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

[Cedh]

I've just uploaded a new version of the world map with (hopefully) finalized tectonics. And yes, it includes mountains, so someone with some climatology expertise can start working out a climate map (Sal? Corumayas?).

I'll probably post a version showing latitudes and major rivers soon.

[the duke of nuke]

Nice! Thanks cedh.
I have a projection program so I can do (with some restrictions) maps of different areas. Any requests?

[Neon Fox]

Nice! Thanks cedh.
I have a projection program so I can do (with some restrictions) maps of different areas. Any requests?

I was thinking that it might be nice to have one of the E Tuysafa plate; if you can do it so cedh doesn't have to, that's even cooler.

That part of the world needs some rivers, first off.

[the duke of nuke]

The map is here. See here for details.

Rivers are certainly needed, but I think that if there aren't any objections we might just go ahead and put some in ad lib. Eastern Tuysáfa is pretty flat, so we can get away with just about whatever we want. Is there anywhere in particular that you want civilisations to develop? The big bay in the east looks quite promising

[Neon Fox]

Rivers are certainly needed, but I think that if there aren't any objections we might just go ahead and put some in ad lib. Eastern Tuysáfa is pretty flat, so we can get away with just about whatever we want. Is there anywhere in particular that you want civilisations to develop? The big bay in the east looks quite promising :)

Yeah, I think that big bay would be a great place for some expansionists to come from.

So how about this: the first wave of human settlement gets us human population on the continent, the islands, and maybe Lesan if someone really loves the idea of some seriously isolated society. They're getting into the late Bronze Age when the second wave shows up, and some of those plant themselves near the big bay. (The third wave is where the Proto-Isles languages come from, so we can let them do their thing.) The second-wavers decide they want to do the Roman thing and Conquer The World, and there we've got some history.

I have some ideas for that smaller northern bay, if no one else wants it.

[the duke of nuke]

I like that. We could have bits of first-wave languages out all over the shop, and yes, Lesan sounds lovely. My only quibble would be that I doubt they'd have reached the Bronze Age before the second wave turn up (it is after all a few thousand years before Ndak times, and they were basically palaeolithic when they started settling Tuysáfa). I'd expect something like the oldest South American urban cultures - some towns, some building, some big chiefdoms - but not much in the way of metallurgy or writing.

[Neon Fox]

I like that. We could have bits of first-wave languages out all over the shop, and yes, Lesan sounds lovely. My only quibble would be that I doubt they'd have reached the Bronze Age before the second wave turn up (it is after all a few thousand years before Ndak times, and they were basically palaeolithic when they started settling Tuysáfa). I'd expect something like the oldest South American urban cultures - some towns, some building, some big chiefdoms - but not much in the way of metallurgy or writing.

Mmm, good point. Maybe they're just starting to experiment with alluvial gold and copper and whatnot. The second-wavers could be a little more advanced since they were more crowded where they came from.

ETA: What is the Ndak tech-level, anyway?

[the duke of nuke]

Early to mid bronze age I believe. Sort of like early Assyria or Anatolia c. 1000-800 BC; the Tsinakan text is based on a Hittite original, so that sort of civilisation.

And I like the idea of the second wave being more advanced and the first wave copper-age at first contact. That would make for some interesting scenarios; I imagine that there would be a fairly serious diaspora of first wave peoples, so endless opportunity for deriving languages

[Neon Fox]

Early to mid bronze age I believe. Sort of like early Assyria or Anatolia c. 1000-800 BC; the Tsinakan text is based on a Hittite original, so that sort of civilisation.

And I like the idea of the second wave being more advanced and the first wave copper-age at first contact. That would make for some interesting scenarios; I imagine that there would be a fairly serious diaspora of first wave peoples, so endless opportunity for deriving languages :D

Yep. Plus we can have all sorts of first-wave substrates, blending in with second- and other first-wave. It'll be cool. :)

It occurs to me that we could make the region lucky in a few ways, if we want to speed up its development a bit. Like, a couple of good crops and animals that are easy to domesticate, maybe some easy copper or tin deposits, that sort of thing.

I have this idea for people whose staple crop is potato- or yam-like, with domesticated deer and rabbits for livestock.

[roninbodhisattva]

Just a couple questions to make sure I've got the idea down in my head: Around what time are we staging these early sketches in. If the First Wave started around -15000, how long would it have taken them to covering the eastern half of the continent? Also, when does the Second Wave enter our zone?

I'd like to have my initial culture be rice (or something rice-like) cultivators, but I'm not really sure where to place them. I was thinking somewhere along the bay north of mountainous peninsula. Getting some rivers in there would be nice.

[Neon Fox]

Just a couple questions to make sure I've got the idea down in my head: Around what time are we staging these early sketches in. If the First Wave started around -15000, how long would it have taken them to covering the eastern half of the continent? Also, when does the Second Wave enter our zone?

I went and looked over the Wikipedia article on the subject, and there are some (mainstream) theories that say it took about a thousand years to get from Siberia to the southern tip of South America. Which is longer than the extent of Tuysafa, plus Tuysafa is east-west not north-south. So a thousand years for the first wave sounds like plenty of time to me. That gives them plenty of time to work up to Copper Age.

The wiki article on Tuysafa says the first wave was in -15000, and Proto-Isles moved off Tuysafa and into the Isles in -1500. So we could just space the waves 5000 years apart.

I'd like to have my initial culture be rice (or something rice-like) cultivators, but I'm not really sure where to place them. I was thinking somewhere along the bay north of mountainous peninsula. Getting some rivers in there would be nice.

Do you want them to be first wave or second wave? If second, they could be the conquerer types.

I think my folks should be second wave as well, but with quite a lot of intermingling with the first-wavers.

[roninbodhisattva]

I was thinking of having them be first wave, but probably with a pretty organized society by the time the second wave shows up. So by the time the new people's arrive, they'll have domestication of their rice like crop set up.

EDIT: Here's a question...where did horses originate, on Akana? Are there horse like animals?

[the duke of nuke]

As far as I know horses are native to western Peilash, so there probably aren't any on Tuysáfa. However, there's no reason not to have a different kind of beast of burden, like camelids.

As far as timing goes, I've had a look at the internal history and got this rough outline, which should give us an idea of when our civilisations should develop. Note that the YP calendar matches up fairly well, in terms of equivalent cultures, to the Christian calendar.

-15000 - First wave of immigration to Tuysáfa (late-palaeolithic "Primundic" peoples)
-4000 - early Ngauro civilisation
-3000 - Ngauro invent writing
-2200 - rise of Ndak
-2000 - Proto-Isles spoken in Tuysáfa
-1900 - reign of Tsinakan
-1500 - Isles language speakers leave Tuysáfa due to invasion
-1200 - fall of Ndak
-200 - rise of Huyfárah
200 - rise of Athale, Fáralo golden age
500 - Athaleran golden age
800 - fall of Huyfárah
1000 - fall of Athale
1300 - printing press invented

Here's a similar one for Earth, years rounded to nearest 100:

-30000 - very approximate arrival of first American peoples
-10000 - first settled agriculture in Near East; Bering land bridge floods
-8000 - first settled agriculture in America (Ecuador)
-7500 - first rice cultivation in China
-7000 - first settled agriculture in India; first copper mining
-5400 - early Mesopotamian irrigation
-4000 - first native copper mining in North America
-3500 - first American civilisation (Norte Chico, Peru) based on fishing and vegetable farming
-3300 - Sumerians develop writing and bronze
-2200 - Akkadian empire
-1900 - rise of Assyria and Babylon
-1700 - reign of Hammurabi, rise of Hittite empire
-1600 - fall of Babylon
-1200 - Bronze Age collapse, fall of Hittite empire
-1000 - first copper smelting in South America
-600 - rise of Greek city-states and Persia
-300 - Hellenistic period
-100 - rise of Rome
100 - Roman golden age
500 - fall of Rome
700 - rise of Islam, fall of Persia
1000 - Byzantine golden age

Ok, bit of an infodump, but it suggests to me that to have more complex cultures present by the time of arrival of the second wave, we should leave a fair interval between the first two waves.
I propose that the second wave start to enter Tuysáfa ca -8000 to -7500 and reach the east coast ca -7000 to -6000. This would give the first-wave peoples time to develop at least agriculture and possibly some metalworking. Both peoples would probably be neolithic or early chalcolithic at first contact; this is similar time depth to the appearance of Proto-Semitic, so we might consider each language stock as being comparable to the Afro-Asiatic family (probably dating to 8000BC or so).
The third wave could start to enter Tuysáfa ca -4000 to -3500, which gives a good 2000 years until the Proto-Isles migration.

What do you guys think?

[Neon Fox]

Ok, bit of an infodump, but it suggests to me that to have more complex cultures present by the time of arrival of the second wave, we should leave a fair interval between the first two waves.
I propose that the second wave start to enter Tuysáfa ca -8000 to -7500 and reach the east coast ca -7000 to -6000. This would give the first-wave peoples time to develop at least agriculture and possibly some metalworking. Both peoples would probably be neolithic or early chalcolithic at first contact; this is similar time depth to the appearance of Proto-Semitic, so we might consider each language stock as being comparable to the Afro-Asiatic family (probably dating to 8000BC or so).
The third wave could start to enter Tuysáfa ca -4000 to -3500, which gives a good 2000 years until the Proto-Isles migration.

That all looks good to me.

How are you planning on getting people out to Lesan? It's not near any of the other landmasses. For that matter, even getting them out on the islands could be tricky, as so far as I can tell Akana doesn't have magic to rely on. :) A mass migration that got blown off course, maybe?

EDIT: It just occurred to me that, given the timescales of the tectonic separation, we could have a species of sentients out on Lesan that shares genus but not species with the "mainstream" humans. I don't know how others might feel about such a complication, though, so consider it just a suggestion.

[the duke of nuke]

I doubt that a new sentient species would be accepted, although it's possible. Lesan doesn't seem too out of the way to settle, since the distance from the east Tuysáfa island arc is about that from Norway to Iceland. It's much less isolated than, say, Hawaii or Easter Island, so neolithic peoples with experience of navigation could certainly get there (discovering it would be another matter, though; being blown off course would be a good start).
I'm starting on a climate map - we can compare it with Corumayas' when both are finished and refine it as necessary.

Shall we discuss this on IRC? It's a bit more convenient for low-level stuff.

[Neon Fox]

I can't get to IRC from here, unfortunately.

[the duke of nuke]

Ok By the way, from the blank map it looks like there are a couple of major rivers in eastern Tuysáfa - one reaching the sea in the NW corner of the big bay in the south, and one coming out at the NW end of the eastern bay, although they could me flowing from anywhere. Both seem ideal for civilisations

[Neon Fox]

Ok :) By the way, from the blank map it looks like there are a couple of major rivers in eastern Tuysáfa - one reaching the sea in the NW corner of the big bay in the south, and one coming out at the NW end of the eastern bay, although they could me flowing from anywhere. Both seem ideal for civilisations :D

I want to put my people around the northern bay, and I think ronin was looking at the big bay. If you're interested in Lesan, that works out nicely and leaves the island arc for someone else.

Perhaps we should just split this out into a thread on the Akana forum? We can call it "Tuysafa Basics" or something. :)

[the duke of nuke]

Yes, let's split it.
Btw I was more interested in the near islands than Lesan, but we can discuss than on the other forum

EDIT: done.

[roninbodhisattva]

This all looks good to me. Once I have some more time and a few organized ideas I'll start posting them on the Akana forum.

[Corumayas]

I've just uploaded a draft of a climate map here.

[Radius Solis]

Just for the official record: we had a big multi-hour discussion of Corumayas' map in IRC. Probably a few minor adjustments will be desirable, but as it stands it's pretty good for our purposes. Things are definitely shaping up!

Meanwhile, work on "Kennan" proceeds apace. I have worked out an adequate diachronic basis for it from Proto-Isthmus, and the results are... interesting. For the verbs in particular.

It will also be preserving the S-grade aspect as a productive verb form, and N-grades and J-grades will be preserved for a sub-class of verbs while their functions are supplanted by a newer regular paradigm for the rest. A complex, poorly predictable vowel alternation arises in all three grades, each in a different way, good enough to do Germanic proud: the S grade conditioned one set of vowels and the N grade the other set, while the J grade conditioned what would have been the same set as the N grade if not for i-affection. Further messing up the picture: most verbs saw their J grade and i-stems merge; various analogical interaction between verb forms and cross-verb semantic contamination; and the vowels themselves moving around until the original basis of the alternations is difficult to perceive.

On top of that, bring in the also poorly predictable initial-consonant variations for valence, and we arrive at a system where many verb stems can look like almost anything. I'm not sure we're far short of Old Irish territory, here. The trick will be to not run out of steam before actually implementing all this for more than six verbs.

[TzirTzi]

Just for the official record: we had a big multi-hour discussion of Corumayas' map in IRC. Probably a few minor adjustments will be desirable, but as it stands it's pretty good for our purposes. Things are definitely shaping up!

I'm sad to missed that! But good to hear that things are moving along

Meanwhile, work on "Kennan" proceeds apace. I have worked out an adequate diachronic basis for it from Proto-Isthmus, and the results are... interesting. For the verbs in particular.

It will also be preserving the S-grade aspect as a productive verb form, and N-grades and J-grades will be preserved for a sub-class of verbs while their functions are supplanted by a newer regular paradigm for the rest. A complex, poorly predictable vowel alternation arises in all three grades, each in a different way, good enough to do Germanic proud: the S grade conditioned one set of vowels and the N grade the other set, while the J grade conditioned what would have been the same set as the N grade if not for i-affection. Further messing up the picture: most verbs saw their J grade and i-stems merge; various analogical interaction between verb forms and cross-verb semantic contamination; and the vowels themselves moving around until the original basis of the alternations is difficult to perceive.

On top of that, bring in the also poorly predictable initial-consonant variations for valence, and we arrive at a system where many verb stems can look like almost anything. I'm not sure we're far short of Old Irish territory, here. The trick will be to not run out of steam before actually implementing all this for more than six verbs.

That sounds awesome We need some good, highly-irregular inflectional languages in Akana. Could we see some sample work by any chance? ^^

[Radius Solis]

That sounds awesome We need some good, highly-irregular inflectional languages in Akana. Could we see some sample work by any chance? ^^

We're getting there, but I still don't have quite enough information on Isthmus yet to know what my full grammatical paradigms are going to look like. I have been hesitant to add to the load (given the sudden burst of activity from the relay) by asking, but resolving the remaining variables (in grammatical morphemes especially) and deciding on meanings for the aspect grades really would be helpful.

What I can give is the stem changes a couple specific verbs can undergo. To do that, first I need to explain stem classes. For both nouns and verbs, there are a-stems, e-stems, and o-stems. These derive from no affection, i-affection, and u-affection respectively, but are manifest in multiple ways. All noun suffixes except the genitive show the actual vowels a, e, or o, or else diphthongs directly related to them (ai, ei, ou). Many verb inflections will lack any of those particular vowels, but which form a verbal suffix takes will still depend on the stem class. Derivational processes in both nouns and verbs often change stem vowels as part of their morphological operation, but in nouns the change itself does not directly signify anything. Verbs sometimes appear in multiple stem classes with different meanings however, which are lexicalized reflexes of the proto-Eige-Isthmus stem vowel system for voice.

First, one of the very few that preserves the original aspect infixation with little complication:

from PI *klijl-t-a- --
transitive stem: hlelt-, e-stem verb, "control, instigate"
N-grade: hlert-, e-stem verb (-r- is often a regular outcome of the N-grade), meaning uncertain
(no distinct J-grade)
S-grade: hlest-, e-stem noun, "rower" (oar pulling on a Kennan ship is done by slaves)

intransitive stem: lelt-, e-stem, "be well-mannered"
(no other grades)


Now, a root with twice as many stems:

from PI *lup-a --
intransitive stem: lweop-, an a-stem verb meaning "be dishonest"
N-grade: lweomp-, a-stem verb, meaning uncertain
J-grade: lwip-, e-stem verb, meaning uncertain
S-grade: lweosf-, a-stem noun, meaning uncertain (maybe "a lie")

transitive stem: fleop-, "lie to, fool", e-stem
J-grade: flip-, e-stem
N-grade: fleomp-, e-stem
(no S-grade)

intransitive stem weop-, an o-stem from *lup-u (the middle voice; later a reflexive disfix was also applied), now meaning "make a fool of onesself"
J-grade: wip-, e-stem verb
(no S- or N- grades)

This doesn't really get into the vowel alternations justice, I'll have to come up with another example tomorrow (I'm doing this right before bed). But note that all of the above stems are subject to numerous possible suffixes in at least two slots (for the verbs), plus prefixes which can further interact with initial clusters, plus some other morphological bombshells I'm considering dropping into this.

[Cedh]

Just for the official record: we had a big multi-hour discussion of Corumayas' map in IRC. Probably a few minor adjustments will be desirable, but as it stands it's pretty good for our purposes. Things are definitely shaping up!

I have asked bricka (as the author of the Climate Cookbook) if he could help us with the climate issues we didn't quite manage to figure out yesterday, and here are his answers:

(1) Why is the east coast of equatorial Africa *here* drier than the Congo when equatorial winds are supposed to come from the east, which would normally create a rainshadow on the western side of the mountains? Do you have any idea about that? (The central-eastern continent on our map has some geological similarities to Africa, except that the N-S mountain range results from a collision of two plates, not from a rift valley)

This is, I think, something to do with the shape of the landmass, which causes the monsoon winds to blow parallel with the coastline, and consequently little moisture makes its way onshore. Yes, this kind of thing is awkward to predict.

(2) What exactly would be the effect of increasing or lowering axial tilt by, say, 3-4 degrees? Currently the map is based on Earth values, but we're considering changing it. What we couldn't quite figure out was which climate zones would expand, and how far. Is there an easy guideline?

The axial tilt directly affects how far the climate cells move during the year - if it was zero, there would be no movement at all, and the climate at a given point would be the same year all round. The greater the axial tilt, the further the cells would move, and so the climate zones which change during the year would expand - these are typically those with "w" or "s" in their Köppen descriptions - whereas those which are much the same all year round like rainforest or desert would shrink. Note that transitional climates like steppe would move, but wouldn't necessarily enlarge or shrink.

As for how much... I really don't know how to quantify this kind of thing. If I did, I'd be able to write a program which would take a map and calculate useful regimes of temperature and precipitation.