(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2020]

[Nloki]

Hello again. Just as a question: does it make any sense to create a naturalistic conlang or even its language family without working on any conworlding project beyond basic diachronics?

For instance, the only "functional" use my conlang(s) would have is writing poetry or personal letters, apart from the conlanging process itself, since conworlding seems astonishingly intimidating to me (or more certainly, to conworld as creatively as quite few have been able to).

[sangi39]

Hello again. Just as a question: does it make any sense to create a naturalistic conlang or even its language family without working on any conworlding project beyond basic diachronics?

For instance, the only "functional" use my conlang(s) would have is writing poetry or personal letters, apart from the conlanging process itself, since conworlding seems astonishingly intimidating to me (or more certainly, to conworld as creatively as quite few have been able to).

Might be misreading this, so create a family of related languages, but only so far as to go "here are a set of sound changes and maybe a sprinking of grammatical changes to link them together" to focus more on one particular conlang, and just sort of creating a vague world for them to exist in?

[Zekoslav]

Which prepositions go with which cases seems to depend mainly on which Proto-Indo-European cases merged with which other cases in the development of individual languages. PIE cases had rather specific if generic roles, like Nom: subject, Acc: direct object and movement into, Dat: indirect object and movement to but not into, Abl: movement away from, Loc: stationary position, Inst: Agents, Instruments and generic adverbials.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply I didn't understand the reason for the difference between various IE languages in terms of the relationships between prepositions and cases. I intended to suggest that, if speakers of this hypothetical Romance language had prolonged contact with, for instance, speakers of Greek or a Germanic language, this could potentially result in them shifting away somewhat from the preposition-case relationships that naturally arose in Latin, depending on the nature/degree/duration of this contact/influence.

I realize this is a rather late response, and you seem to have come to some more interesting conclusions, but I just wanted to try to clarify myself here.

Since morphology is what started this inquiry, let's take another look at the morphology:

Code: Select all

  - |   sg.   |   pl.   | - |   sg.   |   pl.   |
| N |  -US    |  -Ī     | N |  -A     |  -Æ     |
| A |  -UM    |  -ŌS    | A |  -AM    |  -ĀS    |
| G |  -ĪS    |  -ŌRUM  | G |  -ÆS    |  -ĀRUM  |
| D |  -Ī     |  -ŌRUM  | D |  -Æ     |  -ĀRUM  |

I wanted to preserve an ultimately lost Vulgar Latin 1st declension genitive ending -ÆS. This ending would reintroduce a morphological distinction between the genitive and the dative in the 1st declension, and could be easily copied by the 2nd declension giving -ĪS from older and attested -Ī. As for the dative ending -Ī, I took it over from the pronominal declension: apparently it was quite common in earlier written and presumably spoken (this would be a predecessor to "standar" Vulgar Latin ILLUĪ and ILLÆĪ) Latin to have ILLĪ for the masculine/neuter and ILLÆ for the feminine. As for the plural, merging the two cases seemed natural given that all languages except Sardinian derive their dative plural from the genitive.

Now, preserving -ÆS requires preserving final /s/, so preserving the distinction between the Nom and the Acc arose naturally as a consequence. This also means the language probably can't be a too close relative of Romanian.

What do you think about this paradigm (sound changes are WIP... I'm leaning towards the Sardinian development of vowels since that would mean 3rd declension endings G -IS, D -Ī become the same as the 2nd declension ones.)?

Looks good to me! I like and agree with your reasoning behind choosing the suffixes you have. I'm glad that the loss of certain forms in real-world Vulgar Latin hasn't deterred you from using them; I think that allowing little "stretches" like that can make a posteriori more fun. I think I'd also lean towards having the vowels develop as they did in Sardinian, if you're still looking for input on that.

Thanks for this long input. Changing which prepositions go with which cases due to contact is something I'm wary of because it seems like a cop-out, but it actually does happen: colloquial Croatian, especially the dialects spoken near the Adriatic, uses a redundant od "from" with the possessive genitive due to Italian and/or German influence (It. de, Gm. von).

I'm thinking, if we have a language which preserves final /s/ and has Sardinian vowel system, it would have to be a very early offshoot (Sardinia, for example, was conquered in 238 BC, iirc). But the Roman Empire Republic wasn't very large at this time so I wonder where would you suggest it would be spoken?

[Salmoneus]

It wouldn't have to be an early offshoot in terms of settlement, because we're not talking about an early innovation: we're just talking about the conservative failure to adopt innovation.

The 'Western' and 'Eastern' vowel systems can largely be explained as the result of only three sound changes:
a) raising of /e:/ and /i:/ relative to /i/, which spread rapidly through the urban Empire reaching almost everywhere eventually, but not Sardinia
b) analogous behaviour among the high back vowels, which likewise spread through the urban Empire, but less completely, notably failing to reach the Danubian provinces
c) loss of vowel length everywhere

[alternatively, you could explain the patterns by saying that c) was a constant pressure that took effect first in Sardinia and then in Danubia, thus making a) and/or b) impossible in those areas; I think this is a more elegant solution, but probably less likely, because it suggests sound changes happening first in the most backward areas. It's not impossible, though, especially given how many non-native speakers there were.]

[obviously there are complications, around umlaut and the treatment of nasal vowels, but as a simplification...]

To end up with a Sardinian system, you just have to avoid a) and b). That needn't be about how early your area is settled, because a) and b) spread much later than settlement in most areas anyway - they're part of the Imperial urban lingua franca, not an inheritence from initial colonisation. [another way of saying this: the Romance languages are better understood as the breakup of a common language into dialects through waves spreading though the language, rather than through a simple expansionary tree structure]

Instead, it's about how connected your language is to the late imperial world. I would make three suggestions:

a) you're more likely to be conservative in a rural area than in one with major entrepots. Hence Sardinia is actually very close to Rome, but being a pointless backwater* it was able to be very conservative - I would imagine that to late imperial romans, Sardinian farmers sounded like inbred hicks. So find somewhere relatively unpopulated. On the other hand, it needs enough population to maintain its language...

b) you're more likely to be conservative in a peripheral, or better yet isolated, area than one that's central and well-connected.

c) a big factor in a lot of the post-empire was de-urbanisation. The collapse of the cities led to an exodus of city folk into the countryside. I haven't seen anyone theorise this explicitly, but I very strongly suspect that some of the relative uniformity of Romance comes from the artificial levelling of dialects throug deurbanisation: cosmopolitan urban Romans, speaking something closer to a late imperial lingua franca, spread out and replaced the various rural dialects that might have been spoken in backwaters around the empire. I suspect that this is another reason Sardinia is unique: not only were there not many urban sardinians to begin with, but they were never expelled en masse into rural sardinia (because there was no major barbarian invasion), so eventually rural sardinian became the only variety. How can you exploit this? Well, one way is to avoid cities. Another is to say there are some small towns in your area, but no major invasion, so no urban exodus, and over time the towns just dwindle and the rural dialects take over. Another is to say that you're close enough to somewhere else that the urban cosmopolitans went somewhere else instead of into the country - eg perhaps the merchants in the port left on ships leaving only the backward farmers from the surrounding area. Or there could be a very effective invasion, that just slaughters the city folk en masse but doesn't bother actually settling and replacing the local farmers.



Intuitively, you'd think Britain would be perfect for a conservative romlang. In reality, however, British latin was apparently very close to that of Gaul, because of the interdependence of the two areas.

[Shemtov]

I have a phonology, that allows for /ps ts ks pʃ tʃ kʃ/ clusters, initially and finally, in addition to stop+glide clusters initially. Is it better to analyze /ps ts ks pʃ tʃ kʃ/ as:
Clusters
Clusters except for /t͡s t͡ʃ/
/t͡s t͡ʃ/ are phonemes, and /ps ks pʃ kʃ / are heterorganic affricates, and are thus phonemes, too?

[holbuzvala]

I'm designing roots. Would it be beyond the scope of naturalism if verbal roots were differently constrained (phonetically) from noun roots?

My idea is to have verbal roots be:
- monosyllabic
- require a consonant onset

while noun roots be:
- monosyllabic OR disyllabic
- not require a consonant onset

Thoughts?

[Ælfwine]

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to mine...although I don't think I'll continue in Pannonia, as I do not see how I can create a conlang there without ripping off the brilliance of Dravian. A few other locations I've looked at include a sister of Vegliot and Istriot on the Dalmatian coast, a romance language positioned south of Romanian in Bulgaria and northern Greece (essentially being the southern extension of Romanian), or something even in Ireland.

But, ah, enough about me! The language that Zekoslav seems to be creating to me might make a lot of sense in Africa. Admittedly, to me romance languages done in Africa are almost as "overdone" as those in Britain, but if the idea is original as this one I see no reason not to place it there. At least there you can justify a Sardinian-style system of the vowels and relative conservativeness.

Edit: I also like the idea of the Canaries. Perhaps the Azores, too?

[Zekoslav]

I have a phonology, that allows for /ps ts ks pʃ tʃ kʃ/ clusters, initially and finally, in addition to stop+glide clusters initially. Is it better to analyze /ps ts ks pʃ tʃ kʃ/ as:
Clusters
Clusters except for /t͡s t͡ʃ/
/t͡s t͡ʃ/ are phonemes, and /ps ks pʃ kʃ / are heterorganic affricates, and are thus phonemes, too?

If these are the only clusters that behave accordingly, I'd analyze them as affricates.

@ Salmoneus: indeed, I've forgotten that areas can adopt linguistic innovations after settlement: that way both Sardinian and Romanian conservatism when it comes to vowels can be explained. It's not a problem that Dacia was conquered around 100 AD and is more conservative than Gaul, conquered around 50 BC, because the first was obviously an unimportant backwater, soon abandoned, while the second eventually ended up more central than Rome.

So I just need to find a suitable backwater. Canaries (Why? To escape the Arabs?)? Ireland (Someone decides to conquer Ireland for the lulz and later it turns out improfitable and is abandoned like Dacia)? Crimea (Someone decides to annex and colonise the Kingdom of Bosphorus earlier than IRL, Greek becomes the lingua franca so local Latin doesn't pick up imperial innovations)?

[Salmoneus]

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to mine...although I don't think I'll continue in Pannonia, as I do not see how I can create a conlang there without ripping off the brilliance of Dravian.

That's a shame - it's not a competition! You can always just take things a different way from Dewrad, as it seemed you were doing.

A few other locations I've looked at include a sister of Vegliot and Istriot on the Dalmatian coast, a romance language positioned south of Romanian in Bulgaria and northern Greece (essentially being the southern extension of Romanian), or something even in Ireland.

But, ah, enough about me! The language that Zekoslav seems to be creating to me might make a lot of sense in Africa. Admittedly, to me romance languages done in Africa are almost as "overdone" as those in Britain, but if the idea is original as this one I see no reason not to place it there. At least there you can justify a Sardinian-style system of the vowels and relative conservativeness.

Edit: I also like the idea of the Canaries. Perhaps the Azores, too?

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to that post I was going to write on possible romlang locations, ages ago (I got distracted into creating an Arabic-influenced romlang...)

[Ælfwine]

That's a shame - it's not a competition! You can always just take things a different way from Dewrad, as it seemed you were doing.

You are right, but with the location in mind there is actually very little I would have done differently from Dewrad. What I started to do differently is look at databases of inscriptions from the time period as well as look at the possible romance substratum effects on Slavic languages spoken in the Balkans. (An example of the latter: the Common Slavic vowels *ě and *o seem to diphthongize in areas affected by a Western Romance substrate.) My data seemed to suggest a Western Romance providence for Pannonia, except perhaps the southernmost parts.

Link to the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... kan_Slavic

TD;LR: the situation with Balkan Romance roughly corresponded with the situation with Slovene/Kajkavian vs. Chakavian/Shtokavian. That is, the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Slovenia was likely "Western" in its vowel inventory, while the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Croatia was decidedly more Eastern. What this suggests of the Proto-Romance dialect spoken in Pannonia, I do not know, as the Slavic language spoken there was replaced by Hungarian. If this Pannonian Slavic language was a continuation of Kajkavian and Slovene, then I'd suspect the proto-romance language was Western, but if it was a continuation of (Slavonian) Shtokavian, then it was probably Eastern.

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to that post I was going to write on possible romlang locations, ages ago (I got distracted into creating an Arabic-influenced romlang...)

Ah yes I remember that! I would definitely like to see more of it.

Also, is this the page you were looking for? I kept it bookmarked as I found it informative enough.

[Zekoslav]

That's a shame - it's not a competition! You can always just take things a different way from Dewrad, as it seemed you were doing.

You are right, but with the location in mind there is actually very little I would have done differently from Dewrad. What I started to do differently is look at databases of inscriptions from the time period as well as look at the possible romance substratum effects on Slavic languages spoken in the Balkans. (An example of the latter: the Common Slavic vowels *ě and *o seem to diphthongize in areas affected by a Western Romance substrate.) My data seemed to suggest a Western Romance providence for Pannonia, except perhaps the southernmost parts.

Link to the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... kan_Slavic

TD;LR: the situation with Balkan Romance roughly corresponded with the situation with Slovene/Kajkavian vs. Chakavian/Shtokavian. That is, the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Slovenia was likely "Western" in its vowel inventory, while the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Croatia was decidedly more Eastern. What this suggests of the Proto-Romance dialect spoken in Pannonia, I do not know, as the Slavic language spoken there was replaced by Hungarian. If this Pannonian Slavic language was a continuation of Kajkavian and Slovene, then I'd suspect the proto-romance language was Western, but if it was a continuation of (Slavonian) Shtokavian, then it was probably Eastern.

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to that post I was going to write on possible romlang locations, ages ago (I got distracted into creating an Arabic-influenced romlang...)

Ah yes I remember that! I would definitely like to see more of it.

Also, is this the page you were looking for? I kept it bookmarked as I found it informative enough.

Thanks, Ælfwine (and Sal)!

So Romans did actually try to or plan to invade Ireland and Crimea! Now I'm considering which option might lead to a more interesting language... both Irish and Greek have a four-case system similar to the one I'm proposing for my romlang and would be a suitable substrate. In Ireland, though, Irish would be the only language in contact with Latin, while in Crimea there would also be Iranic and Gothic. I might even have my romance speakers fleeing to the Caucasus during some particularly turbulent times, which might help preserve the language until the present day (I have a hunch it would disappear with the Norman conquest of Ireland if it was spoken there).

[Ælfwine]

That's a shame - it's not a competition! You can always just take things a different way from Dewrad, as it seemed you were doing.

You are right, but with the location in mind there is actually very little I would have done differently from Dewrad. What I started to do differently is look at databases of inscriptions from the time period as well as look at the possible romance substratum effects on Slavic languages spoken in the Balkans. (An example of the latter: the Common Slavic vowels *ě and *o seem to diphthongize in areas affected by a Western Romance substrate.) My data seemed to suggest a Western Romance providence for Pannonia, except perhaps the southernmost parts.

Link to the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... kan_Slavic

TD;LR: the situation with Balkan Romance roughly corresponded with the situation with Slovene/Kajkavian vs. Chakavian/Shtokavian. That is, the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Slovenia was likely "Western" in its vowel inventory, while the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Croatia was decidedly more Eastern. What this suggests of the Proto-Romance dialect spoken in Pannonia, I do not know, as the Slavic language spoken there was replaced by Hungarian. If this Pannonian Slavic language was a continuation of Kajkavian and Slovene, then I'd suspect the proto-romance language was Western, but if it was a continuation of (Slavonian) Shtokavian, then it was probably Eastern.

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to that post I was going to write on possible romlang locations, ages ago (I got distracted into creating an Arabic-influenced romlang...)

Ah yes I remember that! I would definitely like to see more of it.

Also, is this the page you were looking for? I kept it bookmarked as I found it informative enough.

Thanks, Ælfwine (and Sal)!

So Romans did actually try to or plan to invade Ireland and Crimea! Now I'm considering which option might lead to a more interesting language... both Irish and Greek have a four-case system similar to the one I'm proposing for my romlang and would be a suitable substrate. In Ireland, though, Irish would be the only language in contact with Latin, while in Crimea there would also be Iranic and Gothic. I might even have my romance speakers fleeing to the Caucasus during some particularly turbulent times, which might help preserve the language until the present day (I have a hunch it would disappear with the Norman conquest of Ireland if it was spoken there).

It's worth pointing out that Rumeika (aka Mariupol/Crimean Greek) lost the genitive case as well as the dative, so Greek at least could not be the source of a Crimean Romance's case system. Gothic may work, although it does not nearly have the level of prestige as Greek or Latin, so keep that in mind. I cannot comment on Iranic or Turkic languages.

Having them flee to the Caucus would be nifty. Sangi and I had individually toyed with the idea, although I didn't go far with it, I still would love to see a properly agglutinative/polsynthetic romlang, if only for the novelty.

[Zekoslav]

Do we know when Crimean Greek lost it's cases? Unless it had happened already in Roman times, it wouldn't be able to influence my language. If I decide to place my language in Crimea, then the story would go that for some reason Rome got angry at the Kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporus and decided to annex and colonise it. Somewhat like what happened with Dacia, this province would be abandoned but would keep a Latin-speaking population (To keep the language conservative, I imagine most would learn Greek as a language of commerce instead of a more innovative Imperial Latin). Also, instead of or in addition to fleeing to the Caucasus, they could also flee to the Carpathians...

But, I can still have it be spoken in Ireland or in the Canaries. Maybe I should make a thread and let everyone vote?

[Ælfwine]

Do we know when Crimean Greek lost it's cases? Unless it had happened already in Roman times, it wouldn't be able to influence my language. If I decide to place my language in Crimea, then the story would go that for some reason Rome got angry at the Kingdom of Cimmerian Bosporus and decided to annex and colonise it. Somewhat like what happened with Dacia, this province would be abandoned but would keep a Latin-speaking population (To keep the language conservative, I imagine most would learn Greek as a language of commerce instead of a more innovative Imperial Latin). Also, instead of or in addition to fleeing to the Caucasus, they could also flee to the Carpathians...

But, I can still have it be spoken in Ireland or in the Canaries. Maybe I should make a thread and let everyone vote?

I believe the link to Rumeíka is still somewhere in the Gothesch Razde thread, first page. It seems more recent then the loss of the dative, which was the first to go and is found everywhere in Greek, not just Crimean Greek.

I'd be interested in that.

[sangi39]

That's a shame - it's not a competition! You can always just take things a different way from Dewrad, as it seemed you were doing.

You are right, but with the location in mind there is actually very little I would have done differently from Dewrad. What I started to do differently is look at databases of inscriptions from the time period as well as look at the possible romance substratum effects on Slavic languages spoken in the Balkans. (An example of the latter: the Common Slavic vowels *ě and *o seem to diphthongize in areas affected by a Western Romance substrate.) My data seemed to suggest a Western Romance providence for Pannonia, except perhaps the southernmost parts.

Link to the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... kan_Slavic

TD;LR: the situation with Balkan Romance roughly corresponded with the situation with Slovene/Kajkavian vs. Chakavian/Shtokavian. That is, the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Slovenia was likely "Western" in its vowel inventory, while the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Croatia was decidedly more Eastern. What this suggests of the Proto-Romance dialect spoken in Pannonia, I do not know, as the Slavic language spoken there was replaced by Hungarian. If this Pannonian Slavic language was a continuation of Kajkavian and Slovene, then I'd suspect the proto-romance language was Western, but if it was a continuation of (Slavonian) Shtokavian, then it was probably Eastern.

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to that post I was going to write on possible romlang locations, ages ago (I got distracted into creating an Arabic-influenced romlang...)

Ah yes I remember that! I would definitely like to see more of it.

Also, is this the page you were looking for? I kept it bookmarked as I found it informative enough.

Thanks, Ælfwine (and Sal)!

So Romans did actually try to or plan to invade Ireland and Crimea! Now I'm considering which option might lead to a more interesting language... both Irish and Greek have a four-case system similar to the one I'm proposing for my romlang and would be a suitable substrate. In Ireland, though, Irish would be the only language in contact with Latin, while in Crimea there would also be Iranic and Gothic. I might even have my romance speakers fleeing to the Caucasus during some particularly turbulent times, which might help preserve the language until the present day (I have a hunch it would disappear with the Norman conquest of Ireland if it was spoken there).

It's worth pointing out that Rumeika (aka Mariupol/Crimean Greek) lost the genitive case as well as the dative, so Greek at least could not be the source of a Crimean Romance's case system. Gothic may work, although it does not nearly have the level of prestige as Greek or Latin, so keep that in mind. I cannot comment on Iranic or Turkic languages.

Having them flee to the Caucus would be nifty. Sangi and I had individually toyed with the idea, although I didn't go far with it, I still would love to see a properly agglutinative/polsynthetic romlang, if only for the novelty.

Yeah, mine was mainly aimed at going from a 10 vowel system to a 2 vowel system and seeing what sorts of changes might allow for that sort of thing.

Having a look at the other Indo-European languages in the area, like Armenian and Ossetian, it looks like the only feature they've really picked up is, well, not really a lot, at least in terms of phonology. Ossetian has ejectives and uvulars, but Armenian looks almost like Georgian if you switch out the ejectives for voiceless plosives and drop the uvular.

Apparently, though, Ossetian hasn't really picked up much in Caucasian-esque morphology (neither has Armenian really IIRC).

On the other hand, both have retained a number of cases, and the Caucasian languages in general seem to be quite "case-heavy", so maybe, if your Romance language can retain its cases long enough before its speakers head over to the Caucasus, it might maintain them into modernity.

[Nortaneous]

Apparently, though, Ossetian hasn't really picked up much in Caucasian-esque morphology (neither has Armenian really IIRC).

But they're much more agglutinative (vs. fusional) than most of IE.

[Zekoslav]

Whether it ends up in the Caucasus or somewhere else, I'd like this language to stay more-or-less realistic (too realistic and it's boring, too unrealistic and it's implausible). So no 2 vowels and 20 cases.

It also wouldn't have spent as much time as Armenian and Ossetian near/in the Caucasus, so it wouldn't be so thoroughly influenced by the neighboring languages.

[Salmoneus]

That's a shame - it's not a competition! You can always just take things a different way from Dewrad, as it seemed you were doing.

You are right, but with the location in mind there is actually very little I would have done differently from Dewrad. What I started to do differently is look at databases of inscriptions from the time period as well as look at the possible romance substratum effects on Slavic languages spoken in the Balkans. (An example of the latter: the Common Slavic vowels *ě and *o seem to diphthongize in areas affected by a Western Romance substrate.) My data seemed to suggest a Western Romance providence for Pannonia, except perhaps the southernmost parts.

Link to the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... kan_Slavic

TD;LR: the situation with Balkan Romance roughly corresponded with the situation with Slovene/Kajkavian vs. Chakavian/Shtokavian. That is, the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Slovenia was likely "Western" in its vowel inventory, while the Romance spoken in what corresponds to modern day Croatia was decidedly more Eastern. What this suggests of the Proto-Romance dialect spoken in Pannonia, I do not know, as the Slavic language spoken there was replaced by Hungarian. If this Pannonian Slavic language was a continuation of Kajkavian and Slovene, then I'd suspect the proto-romance language was Western, but if it was a continuation of (Slavonian) Shtokavian, then it was probably Eastern.

That, as I think I said once upon a time, was my assumption too - I gather than a lot of Romans in Pannonia were military-affiliated settlers from the west, and the area continued to be under western influence for a long time (eg the Frankish empire stretched into the area from the northwest).

All this talking about romlangs is making me want to go back to that post I was going to write on possible romlang locations, ages ago (I got distracted into creating an Arabic-influenced romlang...)

Ah yes I remember that! I would definitely like to see more of it.

Thank you. I do intend to do more at some point, but...

Also, is this the page you were looking for? I kept it bookmarked as I found it informative enough.

No, I was thinking of the follow-up to that, a year later, which I don't think I actually posted, which gave a little more detail on pros and cons of different areas.

[Zekoslav]

It would be interesting to see that. Since my language preserves cases, I'm inclined to place it in a Greek-speaking area: adapting Greek nouns, especially masculines in -ēs and -ās, to Latin declension, could generate interesting results.

[Nloki]

Hi again. Recently I decided to create a language family tree for my future conlangs I'm trying to develop (for the first time), not having tried before because of the many factors that would lead me to a conworlding dead end, even those times I used to get stuck the most.

Although, I'm not sure if this language family tree I've sketched is even slightly naturalistic, it seems like an analogue to PIE branching but with fewer sound changes and too many unnamed languages within it.
In fact, the only things I've named are indeed the main three branches within the language family, Jehoeian, Jhaesian and Qatsewan, which result in the language family to be called Jhekhu-Qatsaic. The word in the slot is an example of phonological evolution during at least five millennia, more specifically the most common word for "child" among the vast majority of the Jhekhu-Qatsaic languages, [pʰɯːʔɴ̩] in the proto-language.

https://pasteboard.co/IsFHM4D.jpg

That's how the paper looks like. I don't have access to any computer right now, thus I had to write it by hand despite my handwriting being a complete mess. Anyway, for the same reason I'll transcript into IPA all the forms on each branch.

¶Jehoeian branch:
[pʰʊːʔɴ̩̊]
[pʰuoqə̥] [pʰuɴ]
[pʊq] [poːkɤ̥] [pɤ̝ŋ] [ˀm̥ʊɲ̟]
[pɤk]
[bɵʊ̯k]
[βøk] [bʊ̞ːk̚] [pok]
[vøx] [bɵɰ̊]
¶Jhaesian branch:
[pʰɯːʔŋ̩]
[ˀm̥ʊʔɲ̩] [pʰɤ̝ʔɲ̟̩]
[ˀm̥ɤ̝i̯ɲ]
[mɵːɲ] [ˀm̥ɤɪɲ]
[mʊ̞ːn]
¶Qatsewan branch:
[pʰɯˀᶰɢə]
[pʰʊʔɴ̩̊] [pʰɯ̃ɴ]
[pʰʊʔɴ̩] [pʰɯ̃ᵝᶰq]
[pʰũŋ] [pʰɤ̝ᵝŋkʰə̥] [pʰɯ̃ᵝɴqʰə̥]
[pʰɨ̃ᵝqχe̝]
[ɸõ̝ŋ] [pʰʉ̃qχ]
[fɤ̝̃ŋ] [ɸõŋ]

Some feedback please?