Arayaz's thread so that she doesn't flood the forum [comments encouraged!]

[Arayaz]

More Ẹlnk (mostly nouns)

ROMANIZATION OF TONE

Low ˩ <a>
High ˥ <á>
Rising ˩˥ <ǎ>
Falling ˥˩ <à>
Creaky ˥ˀ <ã>
Creaky falling ˥ˀ˧ <ȧ> (I guess I'll have to use ı for normal /i/. That's fine, though; I like that letter.)
Low falling ˧˩ <â>

NOUN CLASS
Old English's noun classes no longer have any relevance in Ẹlnk. The original pronouns *hē *hēo *hit (masculine, feminine, neuter) would have become Ẹlnk é êo ĩ, but ĩ was lost entirely, and êo is reserved for female humans, and even then é is often used for female children. In addition, é is often reduced to simply e.

NOUN CASE
The noun cases of Old English were also lost, except on pronouns; however, the genitive forms of many nouns were lexicalized, e.g. wǎtr "water" versus watr "wet" (orig. "of water").

NOUN NUMBER
You know the drill ─ the inflected plural of Old English was also lost, except on pronouns. It was replaced by nı (< *maniġ "many"), which could precede a noun to add a plural meaning, e.g. nı lǎun "traitors." This was only used on indefinite nouns; see below.

ARTICLES
Old English's definite article had a vast number of forms, varying by case, noun class, and number. Most of these forms were lost in Ẹlnk, but it retains two: se, the singular, and a, the plural. The plural particle nı should also be considered an article, since in Ẹlnk it is used only on indefinite nouns. Thus one might have wẹrn (< *wer-mann "man-person") "a man," nı wẹrn "some men," se wẹrn "the man," a wẹrn "the men."

There is also an article hâ that may also be used to make a gnomic generalization. It comes from the same source as a, but was not reduced.

PRONOUNS
Ẹlnk's pronouns retain different forms for different numbers and cases. These are shown in the table below.

Code: Select all

      NOM   ACC   DAT   GEN
1sg   ǐ        me       mın
1du   wǐ       ǔng      ngẹ́r
1pl   we       u        ur
2sg   (h)ù     re       (h)ìn
2pl   ye       ǐng      eor
3sg   e/é      ín       ì
3sf   êo    ì     ír    ír
3pl   ì     ì     ím    êor

The forms marked 3sf are used only with female humans, and often only with adults. The 3sg nominative form is é only in careful speech. The 2sg accusative re reflects an irregular pronunciation of *þē as [ðeː]. The 2pl accusative ǐng is derived from the dual *inc rather than the plural *eow, since the latter became too similar to the 3sf nominative êo. Due to the similarity between the 3sg accusative and dative forms (ín and ím) and the fact that all of the first and second person forms have identical accusative and dative forms, the 3sg dative was replaced by the 3sg accusative.

Due to the similarity in form and function between eor and êor, many speakers/dialects merge the two, as either one.

The singular second person pronouns ù re ìn are informal; in a formal context, one replaces them with the plural pronouns ye ǐng eor, and replaces the plural pronouns with the third person plural pronouns ì ì ím êor.

[Arayaz]

Ẹlnk Verbs

INFLECTION
The Old English verbal inflectional system has been ─ whaddaya know? Mostly leveled! The only remaining trace of inflection is that the participles, much like the genitive, were often lexicalized. It was the first person singular present that became the general form. Thus one might have luyv lvyẹnt luv "to love, loving, beloved."

MODERN TENSE SYSTEM
Since the old tense system was destroyed, a new one rose to take its place.

The past tense was marked by yeo (< *ġeostran), originally "yesterday." Since Old English had V2 word order, these cause a shift in word order from SVO to aux-VSO. So: ǐ luyv re "I love you," yeo luyv ǐ re "I loved you."

The future tense was marked by tẹ́r (< *æfter), originally "after(wards)." Again, this triggers a shift in word order: tẹ́r luyv ǐ re "I will love you."

[Arayaz]

I just wanna say, everyone please do post any feedback you have! I'd love to hear anything you all have to say.

By the way, I'm working on a new project that I may post later.

[Arayaz]

Minimal Phonology Salish

Yep, we're doing this.

I debated a lot whether I should do this from Proto-Salish (pros: it was spoken in the past, so I could do an alternate history; cons: not much grammatical reconstruction has been done that I can find) or Klallam (pros: I own a full reference grammar and dictionary; cons: it would have to be a hypothetical, since Klallam is spoken now), and settled on Klallam. After all, Ẹlnk is a thought experiment too.

So without further ado, I present: Minimal Phonology Klallam, or kakúsan.

So. How does one reduce the monster phonology of Klallam? I have some ideas.

• As a preliminary, to avoid too-terrible syllables, unstressed schwas are never dropped here, like they often are in Klallam.
• *k → kʷ. *k is the only non-labialized velar consonant, so might as well get rid of it.
• Uvulars → velars.
• Labials → labial-velars, except the nasals, I suppose.
• *l → n. *l is pretty rare, anyway. This includes *lˀ → nˀ, for what it's worth, but the existence of *lˀ is ... debatable? It's not, that I can tell, attested in any Klallam word, but it should theoretically exist due to morphophonological processes.
• *ɛ *ɔ → i u should be okay, since they're just allophones of them anyway.
• *ə → a. This could be problematic, but it gets us a three-vowel system.
• We can just totally elide the glottal consonants. The resulting hiatus sequences can reduce to diphthongs /aj aw ja wa ju wi/, and *aa *ii *uu → a i u.
• *t͡s *t͡ʃ → s ʃ. We'll say *t͡sʼ *t͡ʃʼ *t͡ɬʼ → sʼ ʃʼ ɬʼ also.

At this point, the phonology is down to "only" 21 consonants, plus three vowels.
/t kʷ/
/tʼ kʷʼ/
/s ʃ ɬ xʷ/
/sʼ ʃʼ ɬʼ/
/m n j w ŋ/
/mˀ nˀ jˀ wˀ ŋˀ/
/i u a/
But I feel like I can do better. After all, I could merge the glottalized consonants with their regular counterparts and get down to eight consonants:
/t kʷ/
/s ʃ ɬ xʷ/
/m n j w ŋ/
/i u a/
And maybe merge ʃ~ɬ:
/t kʷ/
/s s̠ xʷ/
/m n j w ŋ/
/i u a/
Perhaps I'll do *w → kʷ? Could work. Eh, why not.
/t kʷ/
/s s̠ xʷ/
/m n j ŋ/
/i u a/
Delabialize the velars (in the interest of a simpler phonology overall):
/t k/
/s s̠ x/
/m n j ŋ/
/i u a/
Gemination won't be phonemic, so all sequences of identical adjacent consonants reduce to just one copy.
And after all that, we've reduced Klallam's 36 consonants and four vowels to just nine consonants and three vowels. Absolutely nothing will go wrong here, right?

Grammar in the next post.

[_Just_A_Sketch]

Absolutely nothing will go wrong here, right?

Famous last words.

ARTICLES
Old English's definite article had a vast number of forms, varying by case, noun class, and number. Most of these forms were lost in Ẹlnk, but it retains two: se, the singular, and a, the plural. The plural particle nı should also be considered an article, since in Ẹlnk it is used only on indefinite nouns. Thus one might have wẹrn (< *wer-mann "man-person") "a man," nı wẹrn "some men," se wẹrn "the man," a wẹrn "the men."

I love marking number on articles.

Both of these langs look really cool! I now want to make a diachronic Anglic lang, or maybe just germanic.

[Arayaz]

Absolutely nothing will go wrong here, right?

Famous last words.

Perhaps, heh.

ARTICLES
Old English's definite article had a vast number of forms, varying by case, noun class, and number. Most of these forms were lost in Ẹlnk, but it retains two: se, the singular, and a, the plural. The plural particle nı should also be considered an article, since in Ẹlnk it is used only on indefinite nouns. Thus one might have wẹrn (< *wer-mann "man-person") "a man," nı wẹrn "some men," se wẹrn "the man," a wẹrn "the men."

I love marking number on articles.

Both of these langs look really cool! I now want to make a diachronic Anglic lang, or maybe just germanic.

Thank you!

Maybe you could do Minimal Phonology Germanic!

[Arayaz]

More kakúsan (mostly grammar)

ROMANIZATION
Acute accent for stress: á í ú. /s̠/ is romanized <z>, /ŋ/ <ng>, and /j/ <y>. Aside from this, everything is romanized with IPA.

THE NAME
The native name kakúsan is derived from Klallam *q̓áq̓uʔ-úcən, meaning "stingray-language." It can be analyzed as káku "stingray" plus -úsan "language." I named it this because the name Arayaz is (mostly) composed of the Portuguese word arraia, which means "stingray." (See this post.) I'm not capitalizing it, since Klallam words are never capitalized, and I borrowed that orthographic feature over into kakúsan. I may change my mind about this later, though.

BASIC PRONOUNS
Klallam's pronouns *cn (1SG) *st (1PL) *cxʷ (2) become kakúsan sn st sx. The independent particle that pluralizes the second person, *hay, becomes ay. So far, there doesn't seem to even be any major problem here!

Like Klallam, kakúsan has verb-initial word order. With the verb iyá "to go," one can make sentences such as iyá sn "I go" or iyá sx ay "Y'all go," or simply iyá "He/she/it/they go."

In addition, in Klallam, on transitive verbs with 3rd-person subjects, a suffix -s is added. This is retained in kakúsan, as I'll demonstrate with the verb zkát "to take": zkát sn "I take it," zkáts "He/she/it/they take it."

TENSE
Klallam indicates tense via particles *yaʔ (past) and *caʔ (future). These become ya and sa in kakúsan. However, they also undergo another change: combining with pronouns. In Klallam, the future tense marker contracts with the first-person singular to form *caʔn, but this is the only such contraction. Not so in kakúsan: all pronouns may lose their initial s and replace it with ya or sa to form tense.

iyá yax
iyá ya-x
go PST-2
"You went."

In addition, while tense marking is optional in Klallam, it is fully required in kakúsan.

ARTICLES
Klallam's five most common articles, *cə *či *kʷə *tsə *kʷɬə, would become sa zi ka tsa kza, but the variant *tə of *cə was used much more often, producing ta as the standard form. The usage of the articles is similar to that of Klallam: t(s)a is a standard definite article, zi is a nonspecific article, and k(z)a is an article for nonvisible things. The segments in parentheses appear when the noun refers to a female or to something associated with a female. It is not strictly required, but usually used. This differs somewhat from Klallam, where the so-called feminine articles are rarer, and can also be used when referring to the smaller of a pair of males. So ka úkt is "the deer (not currently visible)," and may refer to any gender, but kza úkt means "the doe (not currently visible)." And illustrating the second usage, one could say ta áyang "the house," but if one was talking about two different houses, one of which was owned by a woman, they could call that one tsa áyang.

I'll translate some sentences in the next post. And I'll use it in the Conlang Conversation Thread or perhaps some translation challenges, so as to expand its vocabulary and grammar.

Edit: This was my 100th post in this thread!

[_Just_A_Sketch]

Maybe you could do Minimal Phonology Germanic!

I may, although I'm usually not a huge fan of minimal phonologies. I think I'll try it at least.

[Eivuhekoi]

Klallam's pronouns *cn (1SG) *st (1PL) *cxʷ (2) become kakúsan sn st sx.

Does Klallam have syllabic consonants, or is this a case of me misunderstanding something, and these are shown as only consonants due to the language featuring a high level of synthesis which means that, when not isolated, the pronouns are not only made of consonants?

[Arayaz]

Klallam's pronouns *cn (1SG) *st (1PL) *cxʷ (2) become kakúsan sn st sx.

Does Klallam have syllabic consonants, or is this a case of me misunderstanding something, and these are shown as only consonants due to the language featuring a high level of synthesis which means that, when not isolated, the pronouns are not only made of consonants?

Ah! Klallam probably does have syllabic consonants, but every lexical word has a vowel in it. The pronouns *cn *st *cxʷ cannot stand alone, and I'm pretty sure they combine phonologically with the verb. It's the same case in kakúsan. (So iyá st should really be written iyást. But I'm not sure if I'll change it.)

[Arayaz]

All right, I've decided to not write spaces between anything pronounced as one phonological unit. Each phonological unit has one stress, which means that unstressed particles next to the verb should be considered part of the verb. Thus rather than iyá yax, we have iyáyax.

[Arayaz]

UCOnceagain

This time I'm hoping to finalize some things for UC1. *ahem*

ETETAESU
In the northeastern hemisphere of UC1, there is a medium-to-small continent called Etetaesu (from Xúuuatxia etek àesu "place of rising"). There are two distinct language families on it: a large family descended from Xúuuatxia, spreading across most of the environment, and a smaller family descended from Njabad, with some languages spoken on the south coast and islands off of it. Most languages from Njabad serve as substrates for the Delta Xúuuatxia languages.

More later, but I want to get this post up.

[Arayaz]

Y'all, I really messed some stuff up [m] is an allophone of /b/ in Xúuuatxia, and I've been getting its distribution wronggggg. I've gone back and corrected it, but ... ugh.

[Arayaz]

Upriver and Delta Xúuuatxia

It's time to do diachronics again!


CULTURAL BACKGROUND
The urheimat of the Íouatxia is a bog and wetland environment along a large river and delta. The river is called kouxìbasáah, or "slithering river." In English, I'll call it Kouxibasaah, following the tradition established by "Etetaesu" of just removing the diacritics.

Kouxibasaah flows roughly northeast-to-southwest from a mountain range deeper inland. For much of its upper range, it's in mountainous highlands, but it loses a lot of elevation around 450 (?) km from the ocean. In this area, it becomes a freshwater wetland, and this is the homeland of the Íouatxia.

The language of these areas is roughly a dialect continuum, but the biggest divide is between the upriver area and the delta area.


UPRIVER XÚUUATXIA
The language I have documented here is Standard Xúuuatxia, the historical language from which all forms of Xúuatxia are descended. The prototypical Upriver Xúuuatxia dialect has undergone the following changes:

• *ʂ → ɻ
• *l → ɻ / _[+back]
• *ɯ → u
• Suffixation of subject pronouns to verb if directly adjacent to verb
• *i *y *ɨ *u → e ø ə o in closed syllables
  Edit: NOT INCL. _VVC
• *a *ə *ʌ → ɛ / _(C)i
• Intervocalic voicing of obstruents

Endonyms:

• Language: Rúuuädjia
• People: Íouädjia

DELTA XÚUUATXIA
The prototypical Delta Xúuuatxia dialect has undergone the following changes:

• *ə *ʌ → e / V[+front](C)_ ; → o / V[-front](C)_
• *dʒ *ʒ → j~ʝ
• Reduction of same-vowel sequences
• Falling tone → high tone
• *j *w → ʝ v (ish)
• Loss of final nasal vowels after nasal consonants

Endonyms:

• Language: Xvótxie
• People: Jóvotxie

More later, probably.

[Arayaz]

Miscellany and Cleanup 2
Mountains, locations, timelines, relations

LOCATION OF NJABAD

• *ə *ʌ → e / V[+front](C)_ ; → o / V[-front](C)_

I realize I've done basically exactly this in Njabad, lol. So Njabad's speakers might have contact with the Jóvotxie. Perhaps I'll situate the Njabad-speaking island chain close off the coast of the delta.


THE HIGHLANDS
The highland in which the source of the Kouxibasaah River lies is home to the Highland language family. Not much is known yet about these languages, but they place a lot of emphasis on nouns, and generally have complex syllable structure.

A connection has been proposed between the Highland languages and a small language family spoken in the subarctic northern climate, which is a tonal language with a small consonant inventory, but shares with Highland languages several grammatical traits, such as having a small, closed class of verbs and three noun classes.


TIMELINE

• Year -800? ─ Parent language of hypothetical Proto-Highland-XXX macrofamily spoken
• Year 0 ─ Proto-Highland spoken, Standard Xúuuatxia spoken
• Year 500 ─ Rúuuädjia and Xvótxie spoken as I detailed them above; Njabad spoken

Thought it'd be good to have this. By default, I'll be detailing stuff as it's spoken in 500. I'll be continually updating that timeline as I add more languages and do more diachronics.

Edit: May 26: I've moved the timeline to its own post.

[Arayaz]

2c2ef0
■■■■ (6ca9500111fd42422099a9fd)
Here begins my ramble.

Haššáya
W̌a!
Hello!

Lhvver
Áéyidít, ne xuňáégawoluf.
I've come to talk with you again.

Lhfọvevier
Elh eyieševo éweš,
I don't know what I'll say,

Erụụħangụjerụ
a kụụw ụụħụjel ụụħụket.
but I want to say something.

Arskiilz
Gvu, lama oṛgwe jeeḷ.
I'm glad to be here.

Kahóra
Cá ’ossoho kaságoxrǒ.
I wish I could be here more.

Xúuuatxia
Toxak kóanni xiosỳan kon nju:
And before I leave, I'll say this:

Alushi
Ibi kahi om ibi taa owam kinukyan.
* ******** ** *** ****** * ** ***** ******* *** ***.

Njabad
Janysaginṡu ngarrmag.
And I'm very grateful for that.

Ẹlnk
Kote ǐ leoırn ér.
I've learned a lot here.

kakúsan
nizsuánangsn atasCBBngxtngs taCBB.
So thank you all for making the CBB the CBB.

· 1600 posts! ·

Edit: So embarrassing, I messed up the kakúsan spacing.

Edit: <ny> → <nj>

Edit: 17 August 2024: Just noticed I typoed the Englush translation of the 2c2ef0.

[_Just_A_Sketch]

Alushi
Ibi kahi om ibi taa owam kinukyan.
* ******** ** *** ****** * ** ***** ******* *** ***.

Why must you do this to us...

Congrats on 1.6k!!

[Arayaz]

Alushi
Ibi kahi om ibi taa owam kinukyan.
* ******** ** *** ****** * ** ***** ******* *** ***.

Why must you do this to us...

Because :3

Congrats on 1.6k!!

Thanks! I'm really glad to be part of the CBB, and I get a bit sentimental with the round numbers.

[Arayaz]

Okay, I didn't like how Rúuuädjia and Xvótxie looked, and I wanted to do some other stuff differently too, so disregard that post. I'll have something new up today or (more likely) tomorrow.

[Arayaz]

UC1 Timeline

Thought it'd be better to have this as its own post.

LANGUAGES

• 0 · Proto-Highland-XXX
• 1000 · Proto-Highland, Proto-Xúuuatxia, Proto-XXX, Njabad

(more later)