Historical descent of related conlangs

One of my collecting-dust projects that I have recently unearthed involves a
story with a considerable history to it. It's going to involve several
different conlangs with historical change and forming of dialects factored in.

My starting point is thus: the story focuses around a city and its
surrounding territory organized by the different tribes. A figure like that
of Sulla, Pompey, or Antony leads an effort to unify the tribes and
surrounding peoples. I have already determined his name to be Marjan
/mar.dZan/ (with all words exhibiting initial-syllable stress as with the
Germanic languages). Now my work is to find out the etymology of his name.

First off, the descent of the language. The tribes presence in their coastal
location comes from a long migration from inland. Think of a small bay
opening to the sea, fed from the north by a river stemming from a tributary
of two rivers, away at over a week's ride distance. Follow the eastern
tributary north past plains and then to hills, growing into mountains at the
source. The ancestors of the tribes once lived much farther north than that.

At that point, mardZan's name was /ma:wosa kigannu/.

(Note that as of the present all languages follow the initial-syllable
stress/Germanic stress pattern.)

The vanguard of the migration settled the hills, finding suitable grazing
for their livestock. The main group migrated later, but being more advanced
in technology, prefered the more agriculture-friendly lower areas. Already
the language had diverged; the vanguard, from now on termed language I, had
developed a separate form from the others (here I'), with

I- ma:wuskigaun
I'- ma:worgiGan

The main group found the low hills unsatisfactory, and so followed the river
to find the high plains just south, displacing an earlier people of language
family K. Permanent agricultural settlements formed here, a dialect/language
formed, called II. At this stage,

I- mO:u:skigO:n
II- ma:urgi:an

The plains were so prosperous that overpopulation came a problem. Plus, wars
with tribes of language family K were becoming troublesome. So, the southern
 tribes migrated further south, following the river. As they neared the
tribuatary, contact with members of language family P began. They heard of
the wonderful fertile land at the coast, so they pushed aside the vast
numbers of P peoples to gain it. The remaining tribes from the migration
settled around the bay. This language is called III, with two major
dialects, east and west. And at the time of the leader aforementioned, the
languages were thus:

I- mu:skejOEn
II- mO:rgiEn
III.W- ma:rgian
III.E- maurgian

And the "modern" period, more analagous to post-renaissance Europe, has these:

I- muSEjEn
II- mOrjEn
III.W- mardZan
III.E- mQrdZan

Now I had to figure out just what /mardZan/ or /ma:wosa kigannu/ meant. I
thought an appropriate appendage for a noble family would be "horse rider".
To elaborate:

roots
ma:wos- horse
kigan- to ride

affixes
-a conjunctive/connective
-nu agent

So, /ma:wos-a-kigan-nu/ horse-rid-er

The inflectional processes have hardly been touched upon, so this is subject
to change.

Additionally I'd like to touch upon the tribes names. The only permanent
names are Chossi and Chulbi /tSOs.si, tSul.bi/. (The city, Chulbin, is named
after the latter.) I figured ancestral forms /ke:astejo/ and /kiolbejo/. At
the various stages:

proto- ke:astejo

I- keasteu
I'- keostei

I- kE:st@w
II- kiosti:

I- kEstu:
II- kuosTi
III.W- cOsti
III.E- COsti

I- kEstu
II- ko:Ti
III.W- tS0ssi
III.E- TOTTe

-ejo is the class plural.

Not much thought has been put to the evolution of Chulbi, save proto
/kiolbejo/ and modern /tSulbi/.

The evolution of Chulbin /tSulbin/ is slightly different. It assumes the
class plural is actually -ei-o. The bare class plural affix plus the
associative affix comes to -ei-ni, which evolves to -in.

There is much work that still needs to be done, but here's a start! I would
appreciate any suggestions, qualifications, requests for qualifications,
requests for specifics, mistakes I made, etc. Basically, tell me what you think!

That's all for now. A wonderful day to you all, whenever that is or may be.

Ben

Reply