Newtlang incubator (NP: glot-taolic theory)
Anthologica Universe Atlas / Forums / Department of Creativity / Newtlang incubator (NP: glot-taolic theory)

? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
im gay and i <3 proto-indo-european
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
Maotic is an... actually it's ok really but it needs to be better. Now that I know somewhat more things about linguistics let's try to re-derive it from first principles.

Common substantives: agróme/agró- "forest", tolet/toléith "tree", taló- "river", namó "sea", ash "ocean", cásper "warm", etkai "island", édris "mountains", elmin(-) "world", cár "land(s)", actó "rift", atlas "great", harad "plains", ablés "storms", cuerol "southern", fír/fíre- "green", alóné "eastern", tárá "far", phato "map". also in "of", ó "to" and á "or".

Proper substantives (probably): Anarós (grassland/prairie?), Mádrós (hills?), Khazad (island), Tabin, Únus (seas), Été (desert); ptolies: Alto, Barith, Sónor, Khélo, Rames Arés, Dorós, Magrós, Mentos, Avalos, Sevros, Ekto Exol (see below), Ekto Mádros (see above), Valias, Andu, Tolao, Ashen (obviously derived from ash "ocean"), Uléné, Tíraló, Malox, Túna, Aspen, Cabotel, Maotel, Akol Bílé, Dalia, Arda; rivers: Ros, Molcrá, Peréx, Málat, Úrol, Mafnil, Exol, Duerol, Septé, Únus, Dekret, Tí, Cabor, Maoth, Dálx, Dzao, Aman; Emaox, Coláera, Ímladris.

-et/-éith should be dialectal variation. -cár alongside ó cár demonstrates both a lack of extensive case inflection (as had previously been assumed) *and* a lack of number. elmin kind of belies even a genitive, so we can assume either nom/acc or nothing at all, and I'm leaning toward nothing at this point—I'll do a full ie-style ablaut system somewhere else.

we already have two -ó words, so river is also taló. the -me in agróme is... a suffix that got generalized, but the compounding stem is still agró-.

ash is the only word with sh, so it's loaned. what is an ocean anyway

we have most things postpositive: sea warm, forest tree, sea storm, plain south, mountain world, rift great, sea east, island tree—but two prepositive; green mountain and far land. the latter is not in a name, so it is more likely to be the usual pattern at least for adjectives. we could say that genitive nouns are postpositive and adjectives are prepositive, so *sea warmth and *rift great...ness?

having c/k both be /k/ is boring. c should be something else, so /kʲ/ regularly but /ts/ in many dialects. fír < fíre with apocope. -s is always syllable-final, so other instances of *s delete. *c before front vowels becomes *s and similarly deletes.

there is one -ol, and about five more in PNs. this is probably a suffix then

The phonology of proto-* obstruents, previously thought to be /p b t d tʼ ɗ k g q/, has thus been amended to /p ˀp pʰ t ˀt tʰ c ˀc cʰ k ˀk kʰ s/ (hi Leiden), which is much more pleasant. I'm inclined to keep the six vowels and the single nasal, because they're unstable, and also I'm going to add original *r to *ʁ.

Vowels might go differently, though. Native words have a/e/i/o with length, and ai, éi (?), ue. ue < *ū, and ai/éi are original diphthongs, so at least one dialect of Maotic lost final -i before consonants, and I guess the other had Vi > V:i or sth.
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
<twabs> numerals in maotic: âst, dék, caont, int, ue, khá, lek, teth, kel, hel
<twabs> numerals in dálx: êth, tês, hénth, inth, ús, ghés, lês, thed, hell, sél
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
I found an old paper of conlang notes. Most of them are bad but there's a list of inflections that we could potentially do something with. They were originally a list of way too many cases, but they're going to be verbal inflections now.

okaja
o
otges
otʝīt
otɕâ
otʝīph
opədêr
opədīt
opəpâ
opənpēh

The stem, let's say, is *okʷ < *nokʷ. So otges, otʝīt, otɕâ, otʝiph are from okdes, okdīt, oktʲâ, okdipah by metathesis. I'll probably put this in * somewhere but I don't have the rest of my notes right now.
? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
message
But what do they mean.
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
okaja is infinitive. o is probably imperative.
otges is imperfective present. In the past otʝīt is used.
otʝīt is habitual present. opədīt is habitual past.
otɕa is perfective present. opəpâ is perfective past.
otʝīph is hortatitve present.
opənpēh is whatever the 'should have' mood is called; usually past but sometimes present.
opədêr is optative.

The language is either Low Tavarian or High Tavarian. I'm not sure which. My intuition says Low, but I want to place these closer to the (southern) Taol languages so they can have some similarity in verbal morphology.

Meanwhile:

Caighir is a distant descendant of the Maotic language. It is the standard dialect; another dialect is called Thâgwhanaigh. In Caighir these are pronounced [ˈkʲæɣɨʁ] and [ˌθag.wəˈnəɪ]. In Thagwhanaigh they are pronounced /tʃeɪɹ/ and /tʃɜ̀ːwaːniː/. The etymology of the latter is (point of divergence) *tʰaːgwanakʲe < (Maotic) *Thao-kuelin-óké. The -óké suffix is the same one as in Soróké, a dialect of Maotic.
? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
message
Orthography tastefulness check: ʝ, ɕ, and ī could be rendered less impractically. Maybe retain the spellings used by a related language?
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
absolutely not; my aesthetic sense is impeccable

(maybe c ć... hmm, I'll need to think about this. having both vowel and consonant diacritics tends to be a bad combination)
? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
message


<j c>. That'll be twenty dollars.
? Izambri Left of the middle
posts: 969
, Duke, the Findible League
message
quoting twabs, Conversational Speaker:
absolutely not; my aesthetic sense is impeccable

giphy.gif

(maybe c ć... hmm, I'll need to think about this.

Bitch-please-Blank-stare-Seriously-Are-y
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
j is /j/

honestly in general using <j> as a fricative is against my aesthetic.

okaja, o, otges, otcīt, otćâ, otcīph, opedêr, opedīt, opepâ, openpēh

macron and circumflex are original and secondary length; the latter is from contraction and the former is from some sort of stress-based lengthening (considering *okʷdipah and *okʷədipah or something, say stress is on the second syllable?)
? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
message
So what are you using <y> for, huh? Huh?!

Motion to add <dzh> as [dʒʰ] to the language's official phonology, but not appearing in any words.
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
the answer to both questions is "I'm not an elf"
? Izambri Left of the middle
posts: 969
, Duke, the Findible League
message
<zh> for [ʒ] is awesome; so, why not?
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
Láadan is actually a pretty language (fight me), so I am going to make a derivative out of it.

It does have some nooblang problems which will need to be retconned, however. I feel like the phonology honestly doesn't have to be one of these—it's weird, but I feel like it's kind of plausibly weird.

A thing which does to be retconned is the noobish phenomenon (which really needs a name) of forming a group of related words with by changing only one phoneme—e.g. the evidentials wa, wi, we, wáa, waá, wo, wóo (and there are other examples). Accordingly I will change these. (I will also remove the last one, which is supposed to simply be a null marking anyway.)

I am also getting rid of the "speech act" markers (the things that go at the beginning of the sentence), except for báa which will remain as an interrogative marker.

Hence, here is a brief grammar of Improved Láadan:

Verbs


TENSE - PERSON/HON - NUMBER - ATTRIB - ASPECT - root - GENDER - COMP - NEG - HABIT - EVID

Tense: aril- future1, é- past, rilrili- subjunctive, wi- optative.

Person: le- first, ne- second, behid- third masculine, behizh- third feminine.

Honorifics: -i deferential, -a intimate, lhe- formal. The first two combine with a final bowel (li-, la-); the last precedes the person marking (lheli-).

Number: zhe- paucal, me- plural. Before a sonorant these become zh-, n-.

Attributive marker: wo-

Aspect: du- conative, ná- continuative, raa- iterative, elith- cessative.

Gender: -id marks masculinity. How could we forget our favourite feature of Láadan? Note that when the subject is incorporated into the verb, gender will actually be marked twice.

Complementizer: -hé2

Negative suffix: -ra

Habitual suffix: -badan3

Degree: -hal4 comparative, -háalik superlative; -ulh anticomparative, -úulhik antisuperlative.

Evidentiality: -álh perceived, -wi self-evident, -yen dreamt, -atháá trusted, -waálh untrusted.

I am slightly concerned there are too many things here... hmm.

_________________________
1. Dialectal aríli-
2. Dialectal -hée
3. Dialectal -bradan, -bada, -bradá, -brada
4. Dialectal -hóo
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
Okay so let's finally talk about Proto-Taol.

The linguists at Chásur reconstruct Proto-Taol something like this:

 p   t   kʲ   k
ˀp  ˀt  ˀkʲ  ˀk
 pʰ  tʰ  kʲʰ  kʰ
 f?  s   ʃ    h

n l r ʁ

i  e  a  ɑ  o  u
ī  ē  ā  ɑ̄  ō  ū
î? ê  â  ɑ̂? ô  û?


The existence of *f is uncertain; it is largely reconstructed to explain Maotic words which have /h/ (instead of Ø), however, it has been noted that most such instances precede /a/, e.g. *fālu > hálu "female human".

kʲ ʃ will be spelled *c *š.

The second vowel series is the long counterpart of the first. The third vowel series, marked with a circumflex, is infrequent; its properties are uncertain, but it was preserved into the earliest stages of all Taol languages (including Eastern Taol, which lost length) long enough to be invariably marked in the standard orthographies. In Maotic both the second and third series collapsed into the first; in Dálx the second and third series are both pronounced as long; additionally, the circumflex marks vowels compensatorily lengthened by the loss of a consonant (e.g. *lek-ši > lês. In Eastern Taol the third series is pronounced long (usually analyzed as doubling of the vowel, e.g. âcasi /a.a.tʃa.si/, etc.) The origin of the third series in Proto-* shows several apparent contractions in *VyV, among scattered other sources.

Maotic


The Taol empire that held Maotel as its seat led Maotic to become the literary language of much of Talócár at an early date, and as a result of the language's standardization, it showed relatively little change for a long period.

Maotic is spoken throughout the majority of Talócár, and is to some degree a lingua franca for Elmincár in general.

A rough sketch of changes from Proto-Taol to the earliest literary period looks like so:
short *ɑ merges with /o/, long *ɑ̄ breaks to /ao/
long *ū breaks to /ue/
preglottalized consonants become voiced and lose preglottalization
loss of final *i
loss of *š universally
loss of *h universally? debuccalization of *f > h
shift of /n/ to /m/ when initial or preceding nearby /n/+a very strange change to be sure, but the distribution bears it out
loss of gemination
*kʲ > [ts] allophonically before front vowels /e i/; gʲ > /dz/ universally

Later final /e/, /a/ were lost (compare literary fíre with modern fír "tree"), and more importantly the entire length contrast.

There may be some more rules later.

Dálx


to be done later, probably in this post (watch this space)

Eastern Taol


same
? kodé man of few words
posts: 110
, Deacon, this fucking hole we call LA
message

The linguists at Chásur reconstruct Proto-Taol something like this:

 p   t   kʲ   k
ˀp  ˀt  ˀkʲ  ˀk
 pʰ  tʰ  kʲʰ  kʰ
 f?  s   ʃ    h

n l r ʁ

i  e  a  ɑ  o  u
ī  ē  ā  ɑ̄  ō  ū
î? ê  â  ɑ̂? ô  û?


looks neat!

The existence of *f is uncertain; it is largely reconstructed to explain Maotic words which have /h/ (instead of Ø), however, it has been noted that most such instances precede /a/, e.g. *fālu > hálu "female human".

kʲ ʃ will be spelled *c *š.

The second vowel series is the long counterpart of the first. The third vowel series, marked with a circumflex, is infrequent; its properties are uncertain, but it was preserved into the earliest stages of all Taol languages (including Eastern Taol, which lost length) long enough to be invariably marked in the standard orthographies. In Maotic both the second and third series collapsed into the first; in Dálx the second and third series are both pronounced as long; additionally, the circumflex marks vowels compensatorily lengthened by the loss of a consonant (e.g. *lek-ši > lês. In Eastern Taol the third series is pronounced long (usually analyzed as doubling of the vowel, e.g. âcasi /a.a.tʃa.si/, etc.) The origin of the third series in Proto-* shows several apparent contractions in *VyV, among scattered other sources.

do you think irl (the constructed rl), the difference is tonal? or with voicing modality?

...
A rough sketch of changes from Proto-Taol to the earliest literary period looks like so:
short *ɑ merges with /o/, long *ɑ̄ breaks to /ao/
long *ū breaks to /ue/
preglottalized consonants become voiced and lose preglottalization

interesting. i'd expect them to lose preglottalization and become voiceless plain, while the old voiceless plain become voiced (chain shift, i guess). but this way works, too.

* loss of final *i
loss of *š universally

that's weird! you'd expect some reflex of it, not a complete disappearance (since it's a noisy sound). maybe you get š -> h -> 0?

* loss of *h universally? debuccalization of *f > h
shift of /n/ to /m/ when initial or preceding nearby /n/+a very strange change to be sure, but the distribution bears it out

that makes sense, at least the "preceding /n/" part, that's just dissimilation. the initial part is weirder, but i suppose it could be bullied into happening by the dissimilation change.


loss of gemination
*kʲ > [ts] allophonically before front vowels /e i/; gʲ > /dz/ universally

Later final /e/, /a/ were lost (compare literary fíre with modern fír "tree"), and more importantly the entire length contrast.

looking forward to more!
? twabs fair maiden
posts: 228
, Conversational Speaker, [ˈaɪwə]
message
το̨ πα̨ς το κκονφον υπερͱενον
? Rhetorica Your Writing System Sucks
posts: 1292
, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1
message
quoting twabs, Conversational Speaker:
ͱ in the middle of Greek

ಠ_ಠ
? Nortaneous ? ?????
posts: 467
, Marquis, Maryland
message
quoting Rhetorica, Kelatetía: Dis, Major Belt 1:
quoting twabs, Conversational Speaker:
ͱ in the middle of Greek

ಠ_ಠ

pls κονσιdερονι the αλφαbετι γρεκ ι γjουχeς σ̈κϳιπε