The CBB

Regarding phonology, I don’t think it’s required that an intruding language gain or lose consonants to approach the average number in the region. For one thing, the language is bound to hold on to at least some of its phonological uniqueness, and maybe overall inventory is an example of that. For another thing, sound changes need some internal justification. If you’re surrounded by languages with glottalized consonants, it’s much more likely that you might follow their lead if you already have lots of CC clusters, and probably less likely if all you have is CV syllables with no glottal stop.

Specifically to the north these speakers would encounter Chumash speakers, and to the east Uto-Aztecan speakers, primarily Luseño and Gabrieliño speakers. The former have relatively large inventories with a tendency to distinguish voiceless, aspirated, and glottalized plosives (and to some extent nasals and fricatives). The latter have smaller inventories, but still average-to-slightly-large by Polynesian standards. No doubt the Polynesians would be exposed to these additional distinctions for centuries, and would probably learn some of these languages for trade, and adopt a good deal of loans words that might carry some of their phonology with them into Polynesian. We have very little data on what happens when Polynesians try to settle lands already inhabited by people, but we can assume that some language assimilation would occur over time.

But by what mechanism would Polynesian add these distinctions to its own phonology outside of direct loans? I think the most obvious track is to shorten sequences of CV?V(:) to C?V(:). This would allow glottal p’ and t’ to exist alongside p/b, t/d, and initial k. Since tʃ and ʃ are found throughout the region, along with good ol’ fashion s, we could add palatization to the mix. We already have jV from iV, so presumably we have fjV alongside fV. The former could give the reflex sV. Meanwhile tjV could yield tsV or tʃV. If this happens before glottalization, we can even have tʃ’ (or, God help us, s’ like some Chumash languages have, from fjV? sequences). Would palatization and glottalization happen? Not necessarily. As I said, languages don’t always change their phonologies to match one another. But at least these changes are plausible on their own.

Sorry to double-post, but this is more cultural than linguistic so I thought it would justify a new post.

Based on what I can find about growing taro and sweet potatoes, and Polynesian agriculture, I think low temperatures during the growing season will become a problem north of Santa Barbara. Meanwhile the need for water will limit settlers to river valleys that do not go dry for most of the summer. The Channel Islands are absolutely off the table. That leaves a very, very limited area for settlement. Polynesian irrigation was never built on the scale needed to turn Riverside into Hilo; even the dry valleys of Hawai'i weren't really that dry, at least not the ones with more than a trivial number of people in them. So if you take the relatively flat land on either side of (what were) permanent rivers in southern California (six that I could find), you get a total land area of 500 square kilometers. You could get 10,000 people out of that, but probably no more since output would be stunted by occasional drought, high soil pH, and a short growing season. 10,000 people spread over more than two hundred kilometers of coastline is a bit bleak. One sustained push by indigenous groups could easily wipe out an isolated Polynesian village.

I can work with this. Where is the coastline you’re talking about?

I think I’ll add some sound changes:

Shifts from Proto-Eastern-Polynesian to Old Rio Polynesian, ~1300

•/p/ > /p/, /b/ intervocalically

•/t/ > /t/, /d/ intervocalically

•/k/ > /k/, /ʔ/ intervocalically

•/ʔ/ > /h/

•/m/ > /m/

•/n/ > /n/

•/ŋ/ > /n/

•/w/ > /v/

•/f/ > /f/

•/l/ > /ɾ/

•/h/ > /h/

•/a/ > /a/

•/a.a/ > /a:/

•/i/ > /i/

•/i.i/ > /i:/

•/e/ > /i/

•/e.e/ > /e:/

•/u/ > /u/

•/u.u/ > /u:/

•/o/ > /u/

•/o.o/ > /o:/

•/V.u/, /V.o/ > /Vw/

•/u.V/, /o.V/ > /wV/

•/V.i/, /V.e/ > /Vj/

•Stress moves from Penultimate to where the First Long Vowel is, assuming there is one. Otherwise, it moves to the first syllable.

Sound Shifts form Old Rio Polynesian to Middle Rio Polynesian, ~1350

•Unstressed Short /a/ Disappears

•/a/> Ø / #_

•/b/, /d/ > phonemic

•/h/ > Ø

•/o:/ > /o/

•/e:/ > /e/

Sound Shifts from Middle Rio Polynesian to Rio Polynesian, ~ 1400

•/d/ > /n/ / initial

•/d/ > /ɾ/ / medial

•/d/ > /dz/ /_i /_jV

•/d/ > /dʒ/ /_i:

•/t/ > /ts/ /_i /_jV

•/t/ > /tʃ/ /_i:

•V: > V / unstressed

•/fj/ > /s/

•/b/ > /m/ / initial

•/b/ > /v/ / medial

•/ʔ/ > /h/

•/e/ > /i/

•/o/ > /u/

•/ɾ/ > /t/ / V_V

sorry to DV82LECM, the island/mainland distinction had to go

Some updates:

•This language project, now officially named “Rio Polynesian” is now co-owned by myself and DV82LECM.

•The language is spoken in the areas between and around the San Gabriel and the Santa Ana rivers in Southern California.

•The orthography (whenever I make one) will be based upon the Spanish romanization, and the language itself will have an abundance of Spanish loans.

Some questions / requests:

•Do any of you have some resources on Proto-Polynesian, e.g. Grammar, Lexicon, etc? If not, do you know where I could find such resources?

•Do any of you have resources on the Gabrieliño language, or other languages of the area? If not, they’re probably pretty easy to find.

And a thanks to all of you who contributed in the past, and you who will in the future.

GoshDiggityDangit wrote: ↑15 Feb 2020 23:20 •Do any of you have some resources on Proto-Polynesian, e.g. Grammar, Lexicon, etc? If not, do you know where I could find such resources?

Yes, there are wonderful databases, like ABVD. Wiktionary (here) is also a decent place to go.

Creyeditor wrote: ↑16 Feb 2020 12:45 Yes, there are wonderful databases, like ABVD. Wiktionary (here) is also a decent place to go.

Thanks a ton for that! Exactly what I needed all this time.

Going through the wordlist, I’ve found that the sound changes need to change again. Specifically, less vowels need to be deleted, and frankly, I think they (c/sh)ould stop changing after Old Rio Polynesian. Just causing me a headache.

There are Polynesian languages whose consonant inventories have been expanded by language contact.

Rennellese: /p t k ŋg ʔ s h β~mb l~ð ɣ m n ŋ/. Basic vocabulary in Rennellese has /ʔ h/ but specialized vocabulary doesn't; specialized vocabulary has /ð ɣ/ but basic vocabulary doesn't. Words with /ɣ/ typically don't have /ŋ/ and words with /ð/ typically don't have /t/. See here. Rennellese *l > ŋg probably went *l > *(g)ʟ > *g, with prenasalization added due to Melanesian influence.

Vaeakau-Taumako: /pʰ p tʰ t kʰ k b d g f v s m̥ m n̥ n ŋ̥ ŋ l̥ l r/. VT allows a wide range of initial CC clusters: /bl fk fl fn fŋ kl kl̥ km̥ kŋ̥ md ml mn mŋ ŋk pl pr tn tl vl/. /d g r/ are marginal.

Fagauvea: /p t ʈ c k b d ɖ ɟ g ʍ w f v θ s ʃ h m n ɲ ŋ l̥ l ɾ/ + four extra vowels /æ œ ə y/. Fagauvea has undergone extensive contact with Iaai, but /d g/ developed endogenously. /h/ is apparently from loans from other Polynesian languages. Not all of these consonants have reached fixation.

Futuna-Aniwa: /p t k f s ʃ~tʃ h m n ŋ β r l/.

There are other Polynesian outliers that you could look at for information for your Polynesian outlier conlang. It looks like the inventories are typically expanded mostly through loans, but through endogenous developments to some nonzero extent.

GoshDiggityDangit wrote: ↑15 Feb 2020 23:20•The orthography (whenever I make one) will be based upon the Spanish romanization, and the language itself will have an abundance of Spanish loans.

Oohh, I'm looking forward to whenever you get to that point! Will Spanish influence its phonology, too? I mean, significantly rather than just to "some" degree? Hopefully there will be a cool balance to it, but in any case, I'm sure it's going to be pretty cool.

Vlürch wrote: ↑17 Feb 2020 21:03 Oohh, I'm looking forward to whenever you get to that point! Will Spanish influence its phonology, too? I mean, significantly rather than just to "some" degree? Hopefully there will be a cool balance to it, but in any case, I'm sure it's going to be pretty cool.

Umm... probably? Maybe? I haven’t thought much about it. I’ll say more about it (maybe) at a later date.

Nortaneous wrote: ↑17 Feb 2020 19:58 Vaeakau-Taumako: /pʰ p tʰ t kʰ k b d g f v s m̥ m n̥ n ŋ̥ ŋ l̥ l r/. VT allows a wide range of initial CC clusters: /bl fk fl fn fŋ kl kl̥ km̥ kŋ̥ md ml mn mŋ ŋk pl pr tn tl vl/. /d g r/ are marginal.

Those kinds of clusters were exactly the kind of problem I was facing. While it’s nice to know that they exist in a real Polynesian language, they’re not what I want.

My Carpathian Bulgar is likewise a project for "Turkic outlier" and an experiment of language contact (with Romance, Slavic, Ugric and even Palaeo-Balkan languages).

Zythros Jubi wrote: ↑20 Feb 2020 05:35 My Carpathian Bulgar is likewise a project for "Turkic outlier" and an experiment of language contact (with Romance, Slavic, Ugric and even Palaeo-Balkan languages).

I’ve seen it, it’s very interesting!

RP now has a tentative native name! Something like "Ritu mu Mawfinu", [ˈɾi.tu mu ˈmaw.fi.nu]. I did come up with a name for California, that being "Mawfinu", and I will explain its etymology with the rest of the name.

•Ritu < *qolelo
This one comes from the PPn word for mouth, as in Hawaiian "‘Ōlelo".

•Mu < *moqo-
An O possessive, but it's U instead of O. Used with inanimates.

•Mawfinu < *mamaqo + *finau
"Far away land". Thought it would work.

What do y'all think of the new name? It will still be called Rio Polynesian when I talk about it, but this is the native name.

Mawfinu as a short-hand endonym sound really cool, I think.

Don't quote me on this, but I might start a new thread and overhaul the project. I love the idea, but the current sound change outputs are not, should I say, floating my boat. As well as this, there is a hypothesis that Polynesians visited California twice. Specifically, the hypothesis, made by Terry Jones, posits that the Polynesians taught the Island Chumash people how to make their canoes. The hypothesis also points out the similarity between the Chumash "Tomolo'o" (canoe) and Hawai'ian "Kumulaa'au" (useful tree). Therefore, I will be moving the Polynesians to the eastern parts of Santa Cruz island.