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

[Zhen Lin]

Zhen Lin:

I also have questions about a few of the Ayasthi allophony rules.

You may find it useful to consult this document.

Do the glides only occur after high vowels, or both before and after? E.g., is aúr [ɑ.u˞ ː] or [ɑ.wu˞ ː]?

/wu:/ is a forbidden sequence, as is /ji ji:/. That said, /wM/ is not forbidden, but then again it's realised as [ u ]. Also, /wy/ and /jy/ are allowed. Phonetically... well, as you can see from the linked document, I wasn't particularly consistent about it - I have [iːˈjɛːnɑɹɑɸɑwuwɑ] but [ɑːˈu]. Perhaps it could be made to be stress-dependent. I don't really have a preference, though I tend to think that it would be a bad idea to contrast /wu ji/ and /u i/.

-Is it right that they only occur between a high vowel and a non-high one, so there's no glide at all in words like èchwy [ɛ.kxu.ɨ]?

Correct. (It is possible to work out that there ought to be a /w/ there though, by phonemic analysis: /"EkxM1/ and /"EkxMw1/ are distinguished as ["E.kxM.1] and ["E.kxu.1].)

-How does this apply to [ʉ] < /wɨ/, if at all?

Hmmm. I suppose the /w/ should be left if intervocalic, especially after, say, /u:/.

What does this mean, in relation to the previous rule? It seems to imply that high vowels could have glides inserted before them, and that such glides would stay but others were deleted. Can you clarify?

Essentially, the semivowel corresponding to a vowel is not supposed to occur before that vowel, except when inserted to break hiatus as described above. So [iji] is not allowed but [Aji] is. Note also that things like /iju:/ are not distinguished from /iu:/. (Diachronically, only /iu: iwM/ are possible. Other combinations would yield things like /ywM/ or /iy/.)

This means word-final position, right? Are all vowels allophonically rhoticized before /ɹ/, or just word-final ones where it's been elided?

Mainly word-final position, but I wouldn't mind if it were extended to syllable-final position as well. (This would most obviously affect the /r\/ of the affirmative particle.) I would not say that all /r\/ trigger rhotacisation, but in particular I'm thinking of the ones which get elided. (Diachronically, this is most important in the case of /or\ o:r\/, which merges with /Or\ O:r\/ when in closed syllables.)

[Corumayas]

Thanks guys.

Zhen Lin, two more questions about the glide insertion rule:

1. Am I right in thinking it also applies after nasalized high vowels? (I can see from your example text that it applies before them, e.g. in [əxˈɹɑwỹ], but I don't see any instances of a low vowel after one.)

2. When you say you weren't consistent, do you mean that you intended to apply the rule consistently but accidentally left the glide out here and there? It does look like it applies to all instances in the example except for that [ɑːˈuː] in the last sentence.

(In case it's not obvious, the details of this rule are important because in the old version of the Agaf changes the glides become fortified and block elision of the vowels they separate.)


Oh, also, Legion: you have to keep applying the elision rules until there are no vowels in hiatus left, right? There are some clusters of three vowels, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were four or more in some words...

[Legion]

Oh, also, Legion: you have to keep applying the elision rules until there are no vowels in hiatus left, right? There are some clusters of three vowels, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were four or more in some words...

I wonder — keep in mind that Zhenlin's spelling is quite digraph-happy, and apparent vowel clusters are sometimes simpler that they appear. Eg: şèatşeıoac’a actually contains only 5 vowels, with only 2 hiatus.

However, if this really does turn out to be a problem, then you can decide that the rule is only applied once, instead of recursively.

[Zhen Lin]

1. Am I right in thinking it also applies after nasalized high vowels? (I can see from your example text that it applies before them, e.g. in [əxˈɹɑwỹ], but I don't see any instances of a low vowel after one.)

It should. I think the only place a nasalised vowel is likely to be followed by another vowel is when a historical /m/ has been elided, and possibly with sequences like /inde/ or somesuch.

2. When you say you weren't consistent, do you mean that you intended to apply the rule consistently but accidentally left the glide out here and there? It does look like it applies to all instances in the example except for that [ɑːˈuː] in the last sentence.

Yes, the rule was intended to be consistently applied.

(In case it's not obvious, the details of this rule are important because in the old version of the Agaf changes the glides become fortified and block elision of the vowels they separate.)

Hmmm. In the old version of Ayasth, I never really mapped out the details of what happens to vowel clusters, so there is some leeway for reinterpretation of the Agaf sound laws.

[Basilius]

My apologies to everybody for the delayed replies...

I'd suggest to place the Affanons just outside the Fáralo sphere, for example in the area marked red on the map below.

Thank you! This is much more space than the Affanons could hope for in my own tentative scenario :)

In order for the Fáralo version of the name Tuysáfa to become standardized, it suffices if some Fáralo captain of the Silver Age period (4th century YP) would record the legends of the Affanons.

I still believe that the first contact should be dated a bit earlier. That is, for the Fáralo to borrow the name from Affanonic (rather than from some more influential language), it seems essential to me that the Affanons should have been the first to deliver the info about the big landmass on the eastern side of the sea. Which probably means that they contacted the Fáralo before 0 YP.

On the other hand, the above does not necessarily mean that the possessions of the Fáralo and the Affanons had to be contiguous (at *that* moment): I believe that e. g. trade contacts of the Fáralo covered much larger area than the territory under their direct control at any given moment in their history.

This way, we can also increase the likelihood of daughter languages of Affanonic surviving... ;)

I thought that if anybody wished to design a daughter, it would not be too difficult to invent some setting for that. For example, some Affanonic speakers could escape assimilation in a newer colony (e. g. on Ttiruku, if no better place is found) which they could establish acting as vassals of Huyfárah. But if they had some state independent from the Fáralo, it's still easier :)

Where do the Affanons live? My concern is that, if they still live on the eastern continent, -200 seems too early for a transoceanic colony, however shortlived. (A migration, ok; but a colony in any kind of regular contact with its motherland seems unlikely. [...])

But I agree with the others that the Affanons settlement would have to be independent, not a colony of a distant group.

My choice of the term "colony" wasn't really apt :) What I actually meant was something like "a recently founded settlement" or somesuch.

I don't mind the colony, though you'd better have a good story for how they got there. :)

No, I have none ready :)

Some time ago I raised a related issue in somewhat different context. From a discussion that followed I conclude that there are two versions about the migrations of the Isles-speaking peoples:

(1) One implying "a Northern Polynesia", i. e. numerous (groups of) islands (not drawn in Cedh's map e. g. because of their small size) north of the Ttiruku-Thumapahìthì arc, providing for a route for Máotatšàlì and Mûtsipsa' speakers (and the Affanons?) which does not involve Ttiruku and Thumapahìthì.

(2) The other, not implying such major geographical adjustments, but leaving no other choice for Máotatšàlì and Mûtsipsa' speakers (and the Affanons?) but to move, one after another, along the same route, from SW Tuysáfa to Ttiruku, then to Thumapahìthì, then to the respective final locations.

Version (2) depends largely on Legion's approval. It seems clear that Thumapahìthì was not uninhabited by the moment when all the migrations started (for otherwise Tuysáfa and Zeluzhia would remain uninhabited as well). But ultimately Legion's Isles nation conquered the whole area and assimilated all the other peoples. In principle, the absorption of related languages could proceed easier, so the idea of several Isles-speaking peoples present in the area for some time may not intervene with the ultimate dominance of one language of Isles origin.

Legion, what do you think? The history of a whole world depends on your word :)

My original tentative plot was based on version (2) and dictated that the story of the Affanons was a rather sorrowful one. Their ancestors were ousted from Tuysáfa, then failed to root on Ttiruku, then were ousted from Thumapahìthì by Legion's Isles-speaking nation, and in the end were assimilated by the Fáralo.

Back in the original contest, each Isles creator had a specialty as a source of borrowing, and Fáralo was included; it supplied terms for open sea navigation.

(I read the above as "...each language creator had a specialty...")
I didn't know of that. Can someone please supply me with the links to the relevant discussions?

At any rate, the vocabularies of the Isles languages as they are documented don't seem to be heavily impregnated with Fáralo loans :)

As no one ever knew where the PI homeland was, this left open the question of how the Isles languages got to their islands in the first place! But they shouldn't have had open sea navigation at the time the languages were described, or they wouldn't have needed Fáralo terms.

(This doesn't preclude coastal navigation, of course.)

All true, but there's open-sea navigation and then there's open-sea navigation. The Fáralo were the ones to figure out how to do it reliably and anywhere, whereas the Isles groups probably just had a technology level comparable to the Polynesians, or even a bit less.

([...] I think sailing technology shouldn't be reliable enough for that till sometime in the second millenium YP.

I am not sure if I understand what is meant by open-sea navigation, but again, don't we face the danger of the Age of Discovery beginning too early?

And, realistically... is there any reason for the Fáralo to be more advanced sailors than the Isles speakers? After all, by the time of first contacts, the Isles-speaking peoples involved had spent a millennium crossing the sounds between several island groups. And the Fáralo descend from a continental nation that didn't navigate a lot, as it seems.

What if we rethink this matter a bit? For example, the naval domination of the Fáralo can be explained by two factors combined: (a) they built an advanced continental state controlling considerable resources, and (b) they were first to contact advanced seafarers (the Isles speakers) who could not aspire for such domination themselves because they were newcomers in their new homelands and did not possess the resources necessary to build fleets, equip expeditions, etc.

As for Tysaffai, I'd say the Fáralo adaptation would be Tuysáfa.

OK, it seems that nobody objects to Tuysáfa, so I'm going to use it on AkanaWiki.

* * *

On another subject...

Ah, I see. Your newer idea, if I understand right, is that Ppãrwak is descended from a dialect of Proto-Isles that didn't delete the stem-final consonant? Since the deletion is presumably the result of a sound change, it seems perfectly reasonable to say that one dialect lacked that change.

Exactly.

On the other hand, if the non-sensory present was a relatively rarely-used form, maybe speakers could forget to delete the consonant and rebuild the tense on the full stem? (It sounds like the kind of mistake language learners might make, to me...)

I don't know. I feel something wrong about it. A pidginization would probably destroy all tense distinctions, and with the normal language acquisition it just doesn't look natural to me.

I do think that, once any pattern becomes available, it can spread by analogy and take over; but the details of how and why a particular pattern spreads at the expense of another (especially when it comes to syntax) are mostly beyond me.

It depends on whether the new pattern conflicts with the old one. For example, a development SOV -> VOS doesn't look OK if WO is essential for parsing the roles.

The main problem that I see with abandoning the V-last restriction in "Ran's PI" is that serial constructions will become too messy. But if e. g. serial constructions were a recent innovation in "Ran's PI" not shared by some other dialects (at that point), then the obstacle is removed - this is what I am considering right now as a potential explanation.

[Radius Solis]

(I read the above as "...each language creator had a specialty...")
I didn't know of that. Can someone please supply me with the links to the relevant discussions?

Unfortunately it was deleted a very long time ago. Much of the earliest discussion survives only in memory. The pages we have on the Almeopedia are (mostly) a document of everything at the time that we thought important to save.

[Basilius]

Radius Solis > Thank you!

This kinda reminded me of another issue...

You may find it useful to consult this document.

I notice that a lot of documentation is currently on Geocities. Geocities are going to be closed "later this year", which may mean anything including "next week". I saved a few documents on my computer, but I didn't attempt at a systematic backup.

- - -

If nobody objects to Cedh's proposal about the location of the land of the Affanons, it would be nice to have a name for it.

Unfortunately, I don't know what is the Affanonic for 'land' or 'country' or 'peninsula' or 'coast', so I can't propose a native name.

However, it doesn't seem too difficult to devise a Fáralo version of the name. Assuming that Affanon is phonetically adapted as Áfanouŋ, a compound like 'coast-Affanon(ic)' can sound like Hagáfanouŋ (modeled on Hagíbəl); I am not sure about the -ou- (probably a diphthong before 0 YP), but perhaps that's irrelevant if we use an Anglicized form like Hagaffanong?

(I also tried a litteral translation of 'the coast of the Affanons' instead of the compound, but it looks too cumbersome: lu-Sou æm lu-gÁfanouŋ if I am not mistaken.)

[Zhen Lin]

I notice that a lot of documentation is currently on Geocities. Geocities are going to be closed "later this year", which may mean anything including "next week". I saved a few documents on my computer, but I didn't attempt at a systematic backup.

I believe I copies of all the documents on my computer. I should get around to putting them on another webhost at some point.

[Basilius]

...In the meantime, I wikified a few things:

Zeluzhia‎, Tuysáfa‎, Ttiruku‎.

Must contain a lot of flaws and mistakes, not to mention gaps, so please don't hesitate to edit and supplement.

Cedh, do you wish to wikify your "Theory of Three Waves"? (see the link from the Tuysáfa‎ page.)

[Salmoneus]

Sorry not to have been helping (and for Antagg stalling completely). I'm barely keeping up with my own projects...


One note: I don't think the Eastern Continent languages should be so easily divisible into three categories. By now the languages would have mixed and intermarried far too completely to be able to discern three simple stocks, I think - especially when one is 15000 years old!

In particular, the southern part of the continent, being mediterranean, will probably be extremely linguistically diverse, at least before empires arise - patches of woodlands, of plains, of scrub, essentially of microclimates and microbiomes. [Note the diversity of California; note that Iberia before Rome had at least three seemingly-unrelated language families]. The north, the woodlands, may well be more uniform.


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I was looking to come up with an idea of who would be arriving when, but it's hard, because we don't seem to have a good timeline of technology. With respect, I think that this should be a priority, as it effects so many different things.

Obviously, we need different timelines for different zones, different subjects, and different periods, and we don't need them all at once. But to start with, we need to get an idea of sailing technology in the transoceanic area.

I suggest:
- Long ago: rafts, small canoes - can island-hop, but unreliably
- Shortly prehistoric: large canoes capable of reliable short-distance ocean travel. Invented in the Northeast.
- Ngauro: Simple coracles for river trade, no sea travel (not having as much wood)
- Ndak: Early planked composite boats, coast-hugging

From this point on, the idea of large ships built from planks spreads east into canoe-cultures.

Classical period: Huyfarah develops a navy. This will primarily be to prevent piracy and fight off raiders, and so will be heavy, powerful warships. Biremes, triremes, etc.

Disordered tribes to the east of Huyfarah will have faster, smaller, more wide-ranging ships for raiding: longboats.

-------------------------



How's this idea for state of ocean contacts:

- Very Long Ago: a trickle of settlers cross the island arc into Tuysafa. They then disperse into a tangle of languages
-6000? "Proto-Canoe", a shoreline fishing culture in the northeast expands along all the coastlines available to it.
-4000? PC is now in four large families: Southeastern (occupying the south coast of the isthmus), Northwestern (the north shore of the subcontinent), Northeastern (the east shore and the northeastern islands), and Southwestern (the island chain, reaching across to Tuysafa).

PC at this stage would represent a contiguous culture, in the sense of frequent trading contacts and many shared characteristics, but such trade would be mostly tribe-to-tribe, not long journeys.

Circa -4000, Southeastern reaches Tuysafa, introducing much sailing expertise, as well as fishing and trading culture, and rudimentery agriculture, perhaps based on root crops. As a northern, forest culture, the speakers naturally expand (rapidly) along the northern coast of Tuysafa, mostly ignoring the less fertile south.

Circa -3000, native Tuysafa peoples on the south coast have adopted Southeastern sailing/fishing technology, and expand considerably: Tuysafa Fishing Culture. They probably venture onto the island chain, and maybe toward Zeluzhia as well.

-3000-->-1500, TFC is gradually overwhelmed by grain-farmers from the east. Proto-Isles is one of the remnants, which is forced into the islands. [At the same time, the Canoe peoples in the northern forests are developing into a fully agricultural culture, and the Isthmus people are supplanting their cousins in the west]


----------------

Northeastern Proto-Canoe would presumably be the ancestor of Nualis-Takuna, and the language of Siixtaguna (if that isn't NT).

[Basilius]

Hi Salmoneus!

One note: I don't think the Eastern Continent languages should be so easily divisible into three categories. By now the languages would have mixed and intermarried far too completely to be able to discern three simple stocks, I think - especially when one is 15000 years old!

Actually, 20000 years old (at 0 YP) :)

What I refer to as "the Theory of Three Waves" was first proposed by Cedh here (and was his response to my speculations starting from this message). The corresponding linguistic groupings were first mentioned here.

As Cedh stated in his original proposal, only the languages of the third wave must be demonstrably related; this grouping is my "Ultimundic" and includes Proto-Isles.

The practical rule that can be extracted from the datings might look like the following: what clearly resembles Proto-Isles is "Ultimundic"; of the groupings within which some remote kinship can be only suspected, the one which is spread in areas not too distant from Ttiruku is "Mediundic"; and what cannot be even fancied as related to these two, can be safely classified as "Primundic" :)

On the other hand, 20 KY is actually less than four times the time depth of Indo-European, so perhaps some loopholes must be left while designing the languages in order to make subsequent lumping job easier :)

As for the three waves themselves, we can state that they were postulated basing e. g. on archeological evidence, while the corresponding linguistic groupings were originally purely speculative.

In particular, the southern part of the continent, being mediterranean, will probably be extremely linguistically diverse, at least before empires arise - patches of woodlands, of plains, of scrub, essentially of microclimates and microbiomes. [Note the diversity of California; note that Iberia before Rome had at least three seemingly-unrelated language families]. The north, the woodlands, may well be more uniform.

I read somewhere that the estimated number of indigenous languages of N. America spoken north of Rio Grande by the moment of first contact with the Europeans was about 700. Tuysáfa doesn't look much smaller, and Zeluzhia is larger.

How's this idea for state of ocean contacts: [...]

Thank you, your suggestions are very heplful. In alleviating my paranoia about a precipitate Age of Discovery, for example :) They add a lot of necessary details.

I think your use of the term "cultures" was closer to the way it is understood in archeology, right? (That is, linguistically they don't need to correspond to any genealogical groupings, but may imply a lot of shared cultural vocabulary.)

Circa -4000, Southeastern reaches Tuysafa, introducing much sailing expertise, as well as fishing and trading culture, and rudimentery agriculture, perhaps based on root crops. As a northern, forest culture, the speakers naturally expand (rapidly) along the northern coast of Tuysafa, mostly ignoring the less fertile south. [...]

-3000-->-1500, TFC is gradually overwhelmed by grain-farmers from the east. Proto-Isles is one of the remnants, which is forced into the islands. [At the same time, the Canoe peoples in the northern forests are developing into a fully agricultural culture, and the Isthmus people are supplanting their cousins in the west]

This reminds me of one concern I have about Cedh's three waves: agriculture emerging independently in SE Tuysáfa (and much earlier than it was imported from Peilaš via Ttiruku). I notice that Proto-Isles has a lot of words referring to domesticated flora and fauna (cereals, fabacean plants, sheep, horses, cows etc.) which would originate from the Old World (or even narrower, Middle East) on Earth. In other words, is probably the same as on Peilaš.

Besides, if Ultimundic migration started around -5000 YP, agriculture was already practiced in a region not too distant from the starting point of the migration.

[Salmoneus]

Well, one problem we have is that we don't have a map.

In fact, the BIGGEST problem we have is that WE DON'T HAVE A MAP.


Let me rephrase that observation: WE REALLY REALLY REALLY NEED A MAP.

We can't really work much out without a map....


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Personally, my preference is for some combination of http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6330 ... ortzy8.gif and http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/1505 ... ew2xl5.gif.

I don't like the way the revision tilts the whole of the continent. I would just tilt at the 'neck'. I also wouldn't tilt it too far - I think it's fine having siixta be a bit colder than Huyfarah, and I think it's find having the islands go up into the arctic - but I would try to tilt the siixta coast a little more east-west, making it and the islands to the north a bit more hospitable.

The next question is what is going on in the northeast ocean. Is the island arc ocean-ocean, or ocean-submerged continent? If the latter, there's probably a nest of islands there. If the former, probably not - but there may be a smaller chain at the other end of the plate, where there's divergence.

Either way, and particularly if we do tilt slightly, we're looking at quite a feasible route for ocean travel.


I don't think proper agriculture need have existed close to the final expansion wave. It's quite a long way from the Aiwa to Siixtaguna.

[Cedh]

Well, one problem we have is that we don't have a map.

We have a map.
You must have missed it, I posted it in the thread a few months ago, but I didn't upload it to the wiki at that time.


Equirectangular projection, centered on the Aiwa region.


Robinson projection, centered on eastern Tuysáfa.

I've done some additional work on this in the meantime; this involves changing the layout of the Mûtsinamtsys islands according to Radius' proposal, and removing some of the islands near the southern Twin Continents.

[Salmoneus]

Oh, OK.

My first reaction is that every continent now looks bigger and more shapelessly blobby than it did before.

Second reaction: what the hell has happened to the northeastern islands, and WHY? They made sense before, didn't they? [Having the islands extend in a ridge from the mainland would make sense as an old plate boundary, which would explain why it's above land when the rest of the plate isn't]

It won't help us much with a migration directly from the eastern continent, as it's not a big move and it's a long way from the presumed starting point for proto-isles.

Third reaction: isn't it a bit weird having that subcontinent all by itself on the corner of a plate? I'd make a small plate covering it and the ocean to the south-east (creating a nesia in the process).

Fourth reaction: wouldn't it be nice to have at least a couple of islands somewhere going vaguely near the arctic?

Final realisation: assuming that Peilas is indeed the home continent.... most of the world is uninhabited, isn't it? If they only reached Tuysafa 20k ago, and then had to cross the whole of Zeluzhia, the other hemisphere probably has nobody living there. Do we want that? I can see pros and cons.
Does Peilas have to be the starting point?

[jmcd]

Corumayas: That would mean creaing a Agaf page on the wiki, right? When would you be finished with the first part?

[Basilius]

I don't think proper agriculture need have existed close to the final expansion wave. It's quite a long way from the Aiwa to Siixtaguna.

OK. Do you mean that we should revise the PI lexical items in question? ('barley', 'wheat', 'flax', 'lentil', 'pea', 'bitter vetch', 'chickpea', 'horse', 'donkey', 'sheep', 'bull/cow', 'goat'.) This is my actual concern.

I am not ready to consider seriously the hypothesis that Tuysáfa (or any portion thereof) might be faunistically and/or floristically identical with Peilaš (or any of its parts). It just sounds utterly nonsensical to me. It seems simpler to consider the items in the above list imported.

Final realisation: assuming that Peilas is indeed the home continent.... most of the world is uninhabited, isn't it? If they only reached Tuysafa 20k ago, and then had to cross the whole of Zeluzhia, the other hemisphere probably has nobody living there. Do we want that? I can see pros and cons.
Does Peilas have to be the starting point?

Assuming that humans on Akana are of domestic origin (that is, not imported from Earth)... I believe that whatever continent they originate on, it must include an area faunistically equivalent to Subsaharan Africa.

And I don't see too much territory in Cedh's maps that looks unreachable for early migrations.

[Basilius]

OK. I think Cedh's datings for the Three Waves can be reconsidered *if that's really needed*. So let's consider "-20 KY", "-15 KY" etc. just conventional labels.

But right now I'd propose to look at them from a slightly different perspective: the Three Big Innovations.

(1) The first Big Innovation was needed to cross the rather narrow sound separating the Lotoka coast from Thumapahìthì. It should have been something not unimaginable for Paleolithic, and it was available by "-20 KY".

(2) Then next obstacle is the somewhat wider sound between Thumapahìthì and the westernmost islands in the Ttirukuan group. It required the second Big Innovation to be available somewhat earlier than by "-15 KY" (the date of first appearance of humans on Tuysáfa).

After that, the spread from Ttiruku to Tuysáfa does not seem to require anything special.

(3) If we want the Twin Continents not to stay uninhabited, it is important that the sound between Ttiruku and Zeluzhia be crossed as early as possible. This would mean that the third Big Innovation should be available to Ttirukuans at a date not much later than "-15 KY" (when humans first reached Tuysáfa).

* * *

Salmoneus, do you mind being viewed as the personification of the expertise needed to specify the nature of the Innovations in question? :)

In other words, how can those innovations be mapped onto your "cultures" and their spread?

[Salmoneus]

I claim no expert knowledge, but I think that when the matter of sea crossings is raised the question is not so much "how far" as "how often". Sea technology improves reliability more than it improves potential.

All it takes to reach Tuysafa (by either northern or southern route, if there is a northern route) is a raft or a dugout, with oars and currents for power. For reliable crossings, of course, you'd want more.


So far we know of only two crossings, so let's look at what we know about them. The first time might be analogous to reaching Australia, where boat-building technology was not found on either coast - so it was probably by raft, or simple dugout, and with a high chance element.

The second time, with the proto-isles peoples, they left many languages in many language (sub)families. Perhaps a linguist could confirm, but to me the fact that the daughters are varied, not falling easily into subgroups, each language with unique developments, implies a fairly haphazard crossing: a group landed somewhere, and then developed more or less in isolation. Perhaps they sent out settlers to another island, but those settlers developed more or less in isolation.
On the other hand, we know that the PI migration was extremely successful, spanning great distances with great numbers.

How do we square this circle?

I suggest that the fragmented nature of the family requires that there are few long-distance journeys and relatively little trade. So, I suppose two limits: small boats and poor navigation.

My impression is that the PI people (if they were a single people) had reliable and extensive boat technology, but it was technology adapted to fishing (or diving, kelp-farming, whatever), not to trade. The boats were probably rowing boats - I'd suggest dugouts but I don't think the flora is right for them. Since they clearly moved quickly en masse, they probably travelled in fleets, which to me suggests that the original settlers (or at least those who went furthest) were actually boat-dwelling people, spreading far along coasts but not necessarily inhabiting the lands themselves.

They would have known the characteristics of the local seas, but not had much in the way of sophisticated navigation, which I think would require either civilisation or long open-sea experience.


The "Age of Discovery" would occur when civilised, mathematical powers took to travel over the sea. Huyfarah wouldn't have done - it's too distant (it would have sent exploratory ships, perhaps come back with tall tales, but not really put anything east of the nearest islands on its maps). Siixtaguna may have, or Isthmus peoples, or the people in Tuysafa.

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When I said that agriculture need not have been near the starting point of the migrations, I mean that even if a migration to Tuysafa started after agriculture was known in the Aiwa, the migrants need not have carried it over.
I do think the PI people would have known about agriculture to some extent - the people who threw them off Tuysafa were probably agricultural. [These people wouldn't have been an empire, I suspect. Empires would have begun further to the east, and these would have been more primitive people, not forming cities and empires until later]



I agree with you about the precise agricultural terms. I think we need to think about agricultural packages, if necessary revising the lexicons. However, remember that "barley" need not be earth barley, and it needn't be the same barley on two different continents. It may just be an easy english translation for a native crop.

[I suspect Tuysafa has a lot of crops, given cultural exchange through the same climatic zone]

[Corumayas]

Corumayas: That would mean creaing a Agaf page on the wiki, right? When would you be finished with the first part?

Yeah. I plan to run both lists of sound changes this week. I'll try to keep you posted on my progress, and put the results on the wiki when I'm done. Does that sound ok?


About the map, some of Sal's criticisms seem valid to me (I also find the subcontinents on the edges of large oceanic plates strange-looking, e.g.). On the other hand there've been so many map revisions that I'm reluctant to suggest any more changes.

What I think we really, really need is a scale. It's potentially relevant to the current discussion just how far apart the islands in the Ttirukuan arc are, for example.

(Judging by earth history, crossings of less than 180 km could have been made as early as we want-- there may be evidence of humans in Australia as early as 62 KY ago, which is relatable to a low point in sea level 65 KY ago, when the gap to cross would have been 160 km [see here]. After 20 KY ago reliable longer crossings began to be made in the SW Pacific, including the colonization of the Philippines ca 17 KY ago; the Polynesians took off around 3.5 KY ago [see here].)


Sal, I like your timeline for sailing technology just fine (but don't forget the Peninsular people, who evidently colonized most of the islands around the great bay before the Isles peoples arrived). And though I'm not entirely clear about the geography, I think I like your proposed "Proto-Canoe" culture too.

The reason for the migration scenario as we currently have it, in a nutshell, is to give Peilaš a head start. Since the long Mediterranean coast of Tuysáfa looks like a very favorable environment for maritime civilizations to form, we thought it'd be good to have it settled a bit later so they don't start colonizing Peilaš too early.

As for the settlement of Zeluzhia and the rest of the world, I don't think settlers crossing a continent needs to take all that long. A thousand years to get from northern to southern Zeluzhia might be enough. So by classical times I expect the southern continent has at least a sparse coastal population on its northward lobe; and if their sailing technology allows, there could well be colonists on the "Twins" too.

(This is not directly related to anything, but it occurs to me that, if it makes things work better-- e.g. with respect to the timeline of sailing technology-- we could postpone the arrival of Isles speakers in the islands off Peilaš a bit. I don't think there's any real reason why they need to be there a thousand years before the Classical period.)


We've discussed the Proto-Isles agricultural terms before (see my post here, and responses starting here). The conclusion we reached was that the terms used in the Isles homeland could refer to completely different species than the ones in the Aiwa valley, even though some of the English glosses were the same.

Anyway, since southern Tuysáfa is much more like the ancient Middle East in climate than the Aiwa valley is, it may be the Ndak terms that should be revised slightly.

[Basilius]

All it takes to reach Tuysafa (by either northern or southern route, if there is a northern route) is a raft or a dugout, with oars and currents for power. For reliable crossings, of course, you'd want more. [...] The first time might be analogous to reaching Australia, where boat-building technology was not found on either coast - so it was probably by raft, or simple dugout, and with a high chance element

Ok, this sounds sensible.

My question was actually motivated by the issue you raised: how much land remained uninhabited by the Classical times. For example, the shortest route I can imagine for an early migration to the Twin Continents is Lotoka coast - Thumapahìthì - Ttiruku - Zeluzhia - the peninsula protruding from "Antarctis" - Western Twin Continent; therefore, a lot depends on how early the sound between Ttiruku and Zeluzhia could be crossed (it looks too wide for rafts and dugouts, doesn't it?).

(The above is based on the "conservative" assumption that humans first emerged on Peilaš.)

The second time, [...]

Thank you! Your explication is really helpful. The picture in my own head is now much more coherent and... vivid?

Your suggested scenario explains a lot of details. For example, it explains how it could happen that so vast an area was colonized by people who could not defend their own original homeland (against a nation that remained unknown on Peilaš for subsequent 1500 years). Or why the civilization level of the peoples of Isles origin was so different in historical times.

I suggest that all that should be "canonized" and wikified (unless other people have any objections).

The "Age of Discovery" would occur when civilised, mathematical powers took to travel over the sea. Huyfarah wouldn't have done - it's too distant (it would have sent exploratory ships, perhaps come back with tall tales, but not really put anything east of the nearest islands on its maps). Siixtaguna may have, or Isthmus peoples, or the people in Tuysafa.

My own preference would be to make technological progress as slow as it is realistically possible, so that e. g. computerization is postponed till 5th millennium :) (This would depend on Zhen Lin's approval in particular.)

When I said that agriculture need not have been near the starting point of the migrations, I mean that even if a migration to Tuysafa started after agriculture was known in the Aiwa, the migrants need not have carried it over.

On the other hand, innovative economic practices could spread faster than migration (or linguistic assimilation) progressed. That is, even if agriculture appeared on Lotoka coast *later* than the "Ultimundic" people migrated to Thumapahìthì, it could reach Tuysáfa *earlier* :)

I do think the PI people would have known about agriculture to some extent - the people who threw them off Tuysafa were probably agricultural. [These people wouldn't have been an empire, I suspect. Empires would have begun further to the east, and these would have been more primitive people, not forming cities and empires until later]

I agree.

However, remember that "barley" need not be earth barley, and it needn't be the same barley on two different continents. It may just be an easy english translation for a native crop.

I thought of that, too.

However, I find no enthusiasm in myself about devising anything relating to biology, just like I wouldn't like to fancy any physiological differences between the humans of Akana and the Terrestrians. Biology is just too complex to judge on how realistic this or that evolutionary scenario would be. After all, a language is in principle something that fits into one human brain, but biological objects are different. And I like toys that look like real things :)

Of course, identical species elolving independently in different worlds can be only a conventionality, a sort of artistic licence; this is why I always add a reservation like "if people of Akana weren't actually of Terrestrian origin", or somesuch. And yet I would suggest adhering to the convention that all biological objects existing in the world of Akana, including humans and e. g. faunistic regions, have direct and more-less identical Terrestrian counterparts.

[I suspect Tuysafa has a lot of crops, given cultural exchange through the same climatic zone]

I am not sure. Are there any peculiarities of the landscape that would complicate a latitudinal spread of species (with characteristic times being, like, hundreds of millennia)? If not, all the lands in one climatic zone would be probably in one floristic region as well.

[Basilius]

Corumayas > Thank you for the links to previous discussions - it was really a pleasant reading :)

Which made me think (once again)... what if we wikify some passages (with minimum editing where necessary) as quotes from fictional Akanian primers, readers, manuals (and the like) of later epochs?

[Corumayas]

Zhen Lin, I have only one lingering uncertainty about your allophony rules.

-How does this apply to [ʉ] < /wɨ/, if at all?

Hmmm. I suppose the /w/ should be left if intervocalic, especially after, say, /u:/.

It looks like almost all instances of /wɨ/ are after a vowel. Should I treat it as [ʉ], and, like the other high vowels, insert a [w] whenever it's in contact with a nonhigh vowel? Or do you mean that it would remain [wɨ] in that position?

Also, your suggestion about leaving the /w/ after /u:/ seems to contradict the behavior of other high vowels in contact, where such glides mostly disappear.

(Note that I'm not really concerned with phonemic analysis here: I'm aiming for the narrowest transcription possible, since sound change operates at the phonetic level.)


Basilius, you're welcome; and that sounds like an excellent idea.

[Zhen Lin]

It looks like almost all instances of /wɨ/ are after a vowel. Should I treat it as [ʉ], and, like the other high vowels, insert a [w] whenever it's in contact with a nonhigh vowel? Or do you mean that it would remain [wɨ] in that position?

Turn it into [wʉ], then delete [w] if it follows any high vowel.

Also, your suggestion about leaving the /w/ after /u:/ seems to contradict the behavior of other high vowels in contact, where such glides mostly disappear.

I meant in contact with a low(er) vowel.

[jmcd]

Corumayas: That would mean creaing a Agaf page on the wiki, right? When would you be finished with the first part?

Yeah. I plan to run both lists of sound changes this week. I'll try to keep you posted on my progress, and put the results on the wiki when I'm done. Does that sound ok?

Yeah, all good.

[Basilius]

Two subjects.

A. I've received no feedback on the proposed name for the country of Affanons: Hagaffanong (which is a non-canonical spelling for a Fáralo word).

B.

(This is not directly related to anything, but it occurs to me that, if it makes things work better-- e.g. with respect to the timeline of sailing technology-- we could postpone the arrival of Isles speakers in the islands off Peilaš a bit. I don't think there's any real reason why they need to be there a thousand years before the Classical period.)

A few observations...

(1) Tymytỳs: Máotatšàlì is the dominant language, related dialects are also present, but a minority speaks "the languages of the Núalís family".

(2) Mûtsinamtsys islands (the home of the Mûtsipsa' language): the Takuña were present on only one island in the group.

(1-2) It looks like both areas had very limited non-Isles-speaking population by the time of the first visits of the Isles speakers. Much of the territory was still uninhabited. Also, it seems that the non-Isles groups were recent immigrants themselves, as they had linguistic relatives on the continent.

No specific dates, and yet it seems that Isles peoples sort of won their Quickest Settling Award (twice). In other words, arrived early enough.

(3) Thumapahìthì (the home of Legion's Isles lang): it seems that by 0 YP the whole archipelago was linguistically homogeneous.

However, it couldn't be uninhabited by the moment of Isles Peoples' arrival, Thumapahìthì being part of the main bridge connecting Peilaš with two other continents. I believe that 1000 years is close to the minimum time necessary for assimilation to be complete, especially as Isles-speaking immigrants could not be too numerous in the beginning.