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

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 2:09 am

Zhen Lin: I saw you were building something here -- http://superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php ... Lin/Sketch -- what is it?

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:17 am

A possible Peninsular language. But I really shouldn't be doing anything with that until Proto-Peninsular is more complete.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 6:37 am

Zhen Lin wrote:I'm finally free!

... and utterly unmotivated to do anything. I still have Proto-Peninsular to work on, but I don't feel like doing anything. Hrm. Anybody up to collaborating with me to work on it?

I'd be happy to offer some help with Proto-Peninsular. The current page is http://www.geocities.com/low_zl/proto-p ... sular.html, right? What work is still needed?

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:28 am

I suppose more work could be done on the grammar, but the main thing is the vocabulary - it needs to be expanded. Tenfold, at least.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:38 am

Is there an existing lexicon posted anywhere?

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 9:14 am

There is a CSV file which you can import into a spreadsheet. It should be the most recent version.

Corumayas · Post by **Corumayas** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:45 pm

Radius Solis wrote:The slow and half-disorganized teamwork approach we've taken thus far with the EI diachronics isn't too bad, and has produced some good avenues of investigation, but it's like a jigsaw puzzle where everyone takes turns, and I've personally reached the point of impatience with it. If someone (not me) wants to be bold and work out some reasonably definitive answers to the proposals, everything else would be a lot easier...

Perhaps the next steps should be:
* Analyze the current E-I correspondences table to see if there's anything we can improve about it
* Once that's done, declare it definitive instead of "proposed". Miwan stuff can be revised later, if necessary, to fit.
* Resolve the variables in the proto-Isthmus lexicon.

Even though the first two points need to happen first, I think a resolved P-I lexicon should be something of a priority here. It doesn't have to be perfect the first time; once it's there it can be revised as needed. But just having it will make all the cross-branch analysis much easier.

Also I think the P-I lexicon needs to be arranged to match the Eige stuff first, and subsequent diachronics to Faraghin can be revised later to fit this as needed - if we finalize all the Isthmus stuff first, fitting the Eige languages into the picture will be much harder.

All good points. I'll see how much progress I can make on this over the next several days...

Edit: I suggest that, unless anyone else wants to hunt for "cognates" between the PI and Miwan wordlists, we declare that we've found all that there are. Then we can just base the correspondences on the current proposals (or as many of them as we can make workable).

Post by **zompist** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:08 pm

OK, I've got the basic lexicon for my Naidda descendant. Now I'd like to have some nearby neighbors to borrow more words from.

Would these

http://superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php ... nium_Akana

be the contemporary languages, or are there more I should be aware of?

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:39 pm

zompist wrote:OK, I've got the basic lexicon for my Naidda descendant. Now I'd like to have some nearby neighbors to borrow more words from.

Would these

http://superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php ... nium_Akana

be the contemporary languages, or are there more I should be aware of?

Kozado, spoken by only 400 people and a long way away, probably should not be a major source of loans... but the other two, definitely, and yes there are more. (Our category-fu leaves much to be desired.)

Ayāsthi: spoken exactly contemporarily with your descendent, and probably the most influential Daiadak language of this era.
Yād: also directly contemporary, and spoken more closeby than Ayāsthi (it's in Lasomo, and Ayāsthi is further west).
Namɨdu: spoken four or five centuries before your language, but smack next door, too. I wonder if boy#12 has any thoughts about how it might evolve...

Those would be the big three. Less-influential languages that are also directly contemporary:
Ājat he-Heloun
E'át (can't get direct link to work, but there's a link from this page, next to Rory's name)

I'm not aware of any described non-Edastean languages of this era, except for Pirikõsu which still lacks any real lexicon - although that one's close to Kasca, south of it. Also south of it there's supposed to be some Peninsular languages; there's supposed to be descendents of Puoni and perhaps Pencek to the southwest too, and of Fáralo to the immediate west. Unfortunately none of the above have been described, as yet.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:14 am

Radius Solis wrote:Namɨdu: spoken four or five centuries before your language, but smack next door, too. I wonder if boy#12 has any thoughts about how it might evolve...

How opportune that today I have begun putting up a partial Namɨdu lexicon: http://superlush.co.uk/~akana/index.php ... du_Lexicon

I was hoping to leave the evolving to someone else, but I could sketch out the next few centuries of sound changes if need be. Maybe they won't be so drastic. Whatever the case, zomp, your language should probably borrow from Namɨdu rampantly, and likewise Namɨdu will from a slightly earlier form of yours.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 4:34 am

Radius Solis wrote:
zompist wrote:OK, I've got the basic lexicon for my Naidda descendant. Now I'd like to have some nearby neighbors to borrow more words from.
I'm not aware of any described non-Edastean languages of this era, except for Pirikõsu which still lacks any real lexicon - although that one's close to Kasca, south of it. Also south of it there's supposed to be some Peninsular languages; there's supposed to be descendents of Puoni and perhaps Pencek to the southwest too, and of Fáralo to the immediate west. Unfortunately none of the above have been described, as yet.

Puoni should be a rather important source for loans because it's spoken right south of the Eigə delta. There's a lexicon here, dating to around 1100 YP iirc.
(@Radius: I've wikified this lexicon a while ago for my own local use. If you want, I can upload it to the AkanaWiki.)

Pirikõsu is not that important because it is a small tribal language spoken by c. 5000 people, in a place where it's rather unlikely that people from Wippwô would have direct contact. But then, the Fáralo founded a colony right at the mouth of the Şepamã river around 400 YP, which existed for three or four centuries but was abandoned after the fall of Huyfárah. This city must have done trade with Kasca, and might have brought some Pirikõsu speakers there. Later, the region was more or less uncivilized until Puoni speakers expanded into the southern forest from the 13th century onwards.

As for a Pirikõsu lexicon, I currently have about 100 loanwords, mostly from Fáralo, Puoni and Miwan, but no native vocab yet because I'm still working on the Proto-Hitatc lexicon. The sound changes are done though, so if you want a few words I can derive some for you. Radius has already loaned a couple pre-Pirikõsu terms into Naidda this way.

Also, I have created a few words for a descendant of Proto-Peninsular to borrow into Pirikõsu. That language is called Menehã by the Pirikõsu (autonym: [ˈmæɾnɛhɑ̃]), and it's supposed to be the northernmost Peninsular language on the continent by 1500 YP. It uses these sound changes except for the last three sections (that is, up to but not including "Consonant mergers and cluster simplification").

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:23 am

If you want you could make a standard language stub for Puoni and then stick your wikified lexicon in a subpage, like /Puoni/Lexicon or the like.

The trouble with the Puoni lexicon is that it is not finalized and some substantial changes will probably be made, down the line. The copy that you linked to was never intended to be more than my own personal notes on how things were shaping up at the time, and I made a lot of later changes which are now essentially lost.

Also available for the curious, however, is the beginnings of a Puoni website I once had started. All that is currently there is a phonological description and a large thematic word list.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:31 am

Radius Solis wrote:(Our category-fu leaves much to be desired.)

I'm just done with some major wiki re-structuring, re-categorization, and elimination of double links (e.g. Aiwa valley vs. Aiwa Valley). It's not all perfect yet, but a lot more organized than before.

A few articles (Akana, History of Akana, Edastean languages, and maybe more) need some editorial revision because they're still written as if the wiki of our own didn't exist. I propose that we place all meta-content into the AkanaWiki namespace, and leave only in-character content in the main articles (except, maybe, for the Main Page, which should in time be turned into a real front page for visitors. For now the article list is okay though).

@TzirTzi:
Would it be possible to activate the __HIDDENCAT__ feature for our wiki? I've created a category "Article" for the purpose of being able to list all true articles without interference from mere redirects, only to find out afterwards that I can't hide this category from the pages themselves, as I expected from the MediaWiki documentation.

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:49 am

cedh audmanh wrote:Also, I have created a few words for a descendant of Proto-Peninsular to borrow into Pirikõsu. That language is called Menehã by the Pirikõsu (autonym: [ˈmæɾnɛhɑ̃]), and it's supposed to be the northernmost Peninsular language on the continent by 1500 YP. It uses these sound changes except for the last three sections (that is, up to but not including "Consonant mergers and cluster simplification").

Hrm, actually, I think those sound changes would only bring it up to -500 Y.P. or so. But I forget what the timeframe for Proto-Peninsular is.

cedh audmanh wrote:@TzirTzi:
Would it be possible to activate the __HIDDENCAT__ feature for our wiki? I've created a category "Article" for the purpose of being able to list all true articles without interference from mere redirects, only to find out afterwards that I can't hide this category from the pages themselves, as I expected from the MediaWiki documentation.

It might be a feature from a future version of MediaWiki.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:01 am

Zhen Lin wrote:
cedh audmanh wrote:Also, I have created a few words for a descendant of Proto-Peninsular to borrow into Pirikõsu. That language is called Menehã by the Pirikõsu (autonym: [ˈmæɾnɛhɑ̃]), and it's supposed to be the northernmost Peninsular language on the continent by 1500 YP. It uses these sound changes except for the last three sections (that is, up to but not including "Consonant mergers and cluster simplification").
Hrm, actually, I think those sound changes would only bring it up to -500 Y.P. or so. But I forget what the timeframe for Proto-Peninsular is.

There's no timeframe set. Lotoka is spoken sometime in the 1st millennium BP, so PPI must be at least around -1500. Since we have no other historical information on any of the Peninsular languages so far, we're relatively free with the time depth. It all depends on the sound changes. But I guess you're right; Lotoka can hardly be two millennia earlier than Menehã if you compare PPI *ktiçilaha > Lotoka kila to Menehã ktiçilæhæ (although this word changed the least of those in my selection). So I think I'll have to add some additional sound changes to my Menehã words

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:36 am

cedh audmanh wrote:There's no timeframe set. Lotoka is spoken sometime in the 1st millennium BP, so PPI must be at least around -1500. But since we have no other historical information on any of the Peninsular languages so far, we're relatively free with the time depth. It all depends on the sound changes. But I guess you're right; Lotoka can hardly be two millennia earlier than Menehã if you compare PPI *ktiçilaha > Lotoka kila to Menehã ktiçilæhæ (although this word changed the least of those in my selection). So I think I'll have to add some additional sound changes to my Menehã words

Yeah. I can assist - I have some idea of what I had intended for the second daughter depicted in the cognate table.

*ktiçilaha > *ktiçilæhæ > ktshīlhǣ /"kts_hi:l_0æ:/. (Rather forbidding-looking, isn't it.)

In the unnamed sketch, this should be *ktiçilaha > *ktihilahə > */"ktihil6hE/] > /"tSiçil1hE/ > /"tsihil1E/. In Fmana-hŋ-Talam, it should be /tija/. In the unnamed third daughter, it might be something like /tSelaxa/. Admittedly Lotoka, like Fmana-hŋ-Talam, has really powerful simplifying sound changes...

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:45 am

Can't find anything in the settings about hidden categories... Maybe as Zhen Lin suggested it's from a future version? Should I investigate upgrading?

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 12:16 pm

Zhen Lin wrote:Yeah. I can assist.

That's great, thank you! It's probably best if we have a discussion on IRC, but I'll post my own ideas here anyway.

ktshīlhǣ /"kts_hi:l_0æ:/. (Rather forbidding-looking, isn't it.)

Yes, especially since Pirikõsu has strict CV phonotactics. This would probably be borrowed as sile /"sile/ or sîlıhe /"sil1he/; or alternatively with /a/ as the final vowel.

The other words you're giving would yield:
/"tsihil1E/ >> /"sihile/ or /"sil1je/, or maybe /"Sil1he/ if borrowed earlier (from /"tSiçil1hE/).
/tija/ >> /"tija/. Unlikely because Fmana-hŋ-Talam is an island.
/tSelaxa/ >> /"Selaha/ (or /Se"la/ if the sequence /axa/ is interpreted as a long /a:/)

I like most of those, but I'll have to see what the other words I want would give. Most importantly, *mrisaŋfa, *fmana-hŋ-talam, and *ŋutŋtax as toponyms, and *marnaç-xa / *marnaç-hŋ as an ethno-/linguonym.

Some of my own ideas what to do with the too-early dialect:

- Syncope of medial unstressed vowels
- VN > V~ / _C, _#
- s,s\,ç,x,h > Ø / #_C, _{s,s\,ç,x,h}
- other coda consonants > Ø (except plosives before {r,l,j,w,ç,x,h} and the fricatives dealt with above)
- ç,x,h > Ø / V_V (unless either of the vowels is nasalized or the second one is stressed)
- ç,tç,kç > s\,ts\,ts\
- {x,h}C, C{x,h} > C_h
- _h > Ø / {m,n,ŋ,l,r,j,w}_
- C_h > [-voice]
- ŋV > gV~ / #_
- Vŋ > V~g / _V
- sj tsj > s\ ts\
- j,w > i,u / except #_, V_V
all diphthongs shorten to their closer component, e.g. Ei,Au > i,u
all non-high vowels merge as /a/ or nasalized /ã/ (not sure about this, maybe retain /E/~/A/ distinction)

This would turn /"ktiçilæhæ/ into /"tis\la/ or /"tis\lE/, which would be borrowed as /"tiS1la/ or /"tiSile/ respectively.

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 12:52 pm

TzirTzi wrote:Can't find anything in the settings about hidden categories... Maybe as Zhen Lin suggested it's from a future version? Should I investigate upgrading?

We're already running version 1.12, which should be the newest one. Maybe they removed this feature but didn't change the documentation. Never mind, it's just a detail.

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 4:46 pm

Here is a small amount of possible extra vocab for proto-peninsular.

(It's in UTF-8)

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:02 pm

That looks good. Two points though:
* -xa is supposed to be an animate nominaliser... so unless we make the Peninsular folk very superstitious, it seems odd to have axiup-xa for "accident".
* Reduplication only applies to roots, so axiup-xa-axiup-xa shouldn't happen. axiup-axiup-xa, perhaps...

cedh audmanh wrote:
TzirTzi wrote:Can't find anything in the settings about hidden categories... Maybe as Zhen Lin suggested it's from a future version? Should I investigate upgrading?
We're already running version 1.12, which should be the newest one. Maybe they removed this feature but didn't change the documentation. Never mind, it's just a detail.

Wikipedia is running 1.13alpha. It should have been released last month according to their release schedules...

Cedh · Post by **Cedh** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:04 pm

TzirTzi wrote:Here is a small amount of possible extra vocab for proto-peninsular.

Let me contribute something as well:

Proto-Peninsular Kinship Terms

(Note: Many of these terms are not specified for the gender of the referent, but if this information is desired, the suffixes *-ua (*-a after final /u/) for males and *-mia for females can be used.)

The core family

*nriax spouse (this is the more common term compared to the next two) > *nriax-ra couple
*urnsu male spouse, husband
*kamçak female spouse, wife
*pama father
*huma mother
*likm parent (regardless of gender) > *likm-ra both parents
*kpuar child (general) > *kpuar-ua boy, *kpuar-mia girl
*liçli baby; affectionate address for children > *liçli-ua, *liçli-mia
*paŋa child (of parents), heir; son > *paŋa-xa son (emphatic), *paŋ(a)-mia daughter
*kait sibling > *kait-ua brother, *kait-mia sister

The extended family

*fuŋtu-pama grandfather (lit. "old-father")
*fuŋtu-huma grandmother
*xina-paŋa grandchild (lit. "young-child")
*kalpsu aunt or uncle (gender can be specified with suffixes *-ua/-mia, as above)
*tilxu nephew or niece (child of one's own sibling)
*açus nephew or niece (child of spouse's sibling)
*xilar first cousin (child of *kalpsu)
*ntaŋ second cousin (child of parent's *kalpsu)
*mikal father-in-law
*ŋukim mother-in-law
*lapxa sibling-in-law (sibling of husband)
*tamçu sibling-in-law (sibling of wife)
*muru aunt/uncle-in-law (*kalpsu of spouse)
*pulnuç cousin-in-law (first cousin of spouse)
*limr sibling of sibling's spouse
*silu spouse of spouse's sibling
*xina-fmar child-in-law
*fmar relative-in-law (in general) > collective: *fmar-hr all relatives-in-law

General terms

*likm-hr core family (includes parents and their own children)
*hapa broader family (also includes grandparents, parents-in-law, and siblings-in-law with their children, but not direct aunts, uncles, or cousins)
*laŋaç clan (includes aunts, uncles, first and second cousins, and also aunts-in-law, uncles-in-law, and cousins-in-law - in short, all the relatives mentioned above)
*çiaŋ any member of the *laŋaç

*tittip-xa ancestor > collective: *tittip-xa-hr ancestors
*nruni descendant > collective: *nruni-hr offspring, descendants

*likm-likm "parents (EXH)" and *paŋa-hr "heirs (COLL)" or *paŋa-paŋa "heirs (EXH)" may have been used as an alternative to the above collective terms.

[EDIT]
I've just realized that the original dictionary already contains terms for "father" (*pā) and "mother" (*mā). It might be possible to interpret these as shortened forms of more formal *pama, *huma respectively, but you could also ditch the latter (and change the derived grandparent words to *fuŋtu-pā, *fuŋtu-mā accordingly).
[/EDIT]

TzirTzi · Post by **TzirTzi** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 4:20 am

Zhen Lin wrote:That looks good. Two points though:
* -xa is supposed to be an animate nominaliser... so unless we make the Peninsular folk very superstitious, it seems odd to have axiup-xa for "accident".
* Reduplication only applies to roots, so axiup-xa-axiup-xa shouldn't happen. axiup-axiup-xa, perhaps...

Ah, I did know that -xa was for animates, just must have forgotten it briefly..

And I wasn't sure about the reduplication. But that stem is being discarded anyway, so it becomes irrelevant

.

cedh audmanh wrote:
TzirTzi wrote:Can't find anything in the settings about hidden categories... Maybe as Zhen Lin suggested it's from a future version? Should I investigate upgrading?
We're already running version 1.12, which should be the newest one. Maybe they removed this feature but didn't change the documentation. Never mind, it's just a detail.
Wikipedia is running 1.13alpha. It should have been released last month according to their release schedules...

I'll have a look at the mediawiki page...

cedh - looks like a very thorough kin-system

I can't comment on whether it's good proto-peninsular (especially given that some of mine wasn't

) but it looks great!

If we all add little bits at a time to the PP vocab then I'm sure we can get there reasonably quickly. Zhen Lin, you said you wanted tenfold what you had already - so about 1800-2000 forms in total? How many roots?

Radius Solis · Post by **Radius Solis** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 7:11 am

I'm thinking it would make a lot of sense to divide timelines up by sphere as well. If I want a history of the Aiwa valley the clutter from other spheres isn't currently huge, because there's so much material for the Aiwa sphere, but it will be a different story when I get the Xsali timeline up! It's two pages long in Notepad and that still only covers the second empire and interregnum... in barebones. I figure I'll leave earlier stuff for anyone else who's interested, but I'll need to do some third-empire material so it can be up to date with the Xsali language, down the line when I get it done.

Alternative: a columned-table format, one column per sphere. Or two columns, one for the Aiwa sphere and one for everything else.

Zhen Lin · Post by **Zhen Lin** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 7:33 am

TzirTzi wrote:If we all add little bits at a time to the PP vocab then I'm sure we can get there reasonably quickly. Zhen Lin, you said you wanted tenfold what you had already - so about 1800-2000 forms in total? How many roots?

My goal would be to have it to at least the same level of detail as PIE, so, uh, 600ish? We have about 3 forms per root, so it coincides with the tenfold goal.

cedh audmanh wrote:[EDIT]
I've just realized that the original dictionary already contains terms for "father" (*pā) and "mother" (*mā). It might be possible to interpret these as shortened forms of more formal *pama, *huma respectively, but you could also ditch the latter (and change the derived grandparent words to *fuŋtu-pā, *fuŋtu-mā accordingly).
[/EDIT]

I think, I intended *pā and *mā to be vocative forms (as with the stereotyped calls of babies), with *pā-tan and *mā-tan as the substantives. By the nature of its derivation it would be restricted to humans. However, the reflexes of *pā-xa and *mā-xa are unsatisfactory, so I could adopt *pama and *huma to refer to parents in general.