Re: Holic and other languages

At 23:05 06/06/03, you wrote:
>Ian Spackman sikyal:
>
>Sorry for the late reply, but I've been busy. I was fascinated by this
>post, though, and I'm excited to see another conlanger with my love for
>historical linguistics. Proto-language reconstruction is my absolute
>favorite part of conlanging.
>
> > syllable structure CVC (from CVCV, historically); most names have two
> > syllables.
> >
> > Phonemic inventory
> > p  t  tj  k        i     u
> > b  d  dj  g        e     o
> > f  s  sj  x  h        a
> > v  z  zj  q
> > m  n  nj  c
> >     l  lj
> >     r
> >        y   w
> >
> > (Incidentally, I have since had objections that using q for the voiced
> > velar fricative and c for the velar nasal is just too weird.  Other
> > proposals have been to use sx zx nx or sq zq nq for x q c.  I'd vaguely
> > like to hear opinions on the matter.)
>
>The obvious choices, as Andreas said, are |gh| and |ng|. Or you can use
>the Teonaht Way and write |hg| and |gn|. Or the Greek way and write |gg|
>for /N/. Thinking about some sample words, I think my preferred aesthetic
>solution would be |hg| for /G/ and |ng| for /N/. Ngoldo, prahga, hgasju.
>Mmmmmm. I especially like that last one as ['Gas`u]
Well, my motivation was that I wanted an unambiguous
transcription.  Intervocalicly, ng, hg, gh and gg can all occur.  (Or at
least, I think so; though I've been thinking I ought to add some more
sanddhi effects.)

As you say, x is fair enough for /x/. :)  I assigned q to /G/  because of a
visual similarity to g, and c to /N/, well, mostly because it was
left.  Also because ck, cg, cq all look not-too-alien to my eye, and I
think /N/ occurs a lot before the other velars.

Oh, and the use of c was also somewhat inspired by the Greek use of
gamma.  Hm, I suppose they are the same letter, ultimately. :)

> > proto-Oigulao-Holic (PrOH)
>
>Have you put internal criteria to the test to find the site of PrOH? E.g.
>what vocabulary items are present or conspicuously missing, how old is the
>name of the valley, etc.
Not yet, but I have almost no vocab yet.  I will, eventually. :)


> > different stress pattern - the accent fell on the class inflection.  (I
> > think this was originally a marked form, perhaps used when the adjective
> > and noun were in the reverse of the usual order, and then got generalised,
> > but I haven't really touched syntax yet.)
>
>Proto-syntax is such a difficult problem, even in the real world. I intend
>to leave the syntax of PY alone for quite some time.
I also don't see much point in giving it a lot of attention, at least yet.

> > The feminine noun class is reinterpreted as neutral class (with a certain
> > ending on the root); and the non-human plural is reinterpreted as
> > neutral/feminine.  At some later stage, when the deverbal class begin to
> > take plurals, they happen to take the human (now masculine) plural.
>
>This is a rather peculiar set of changes--what motivated them? Do you
>know?
The feminines (Class IV) were just reanalysed into Class I on basis of form
(mostly what this meant was dropping a syllable from adjectives modifying a
Class IV noun.  I think all Class I nouns were taking Class V plurals by
that point, and so the feminines followed suit.  (Not all "feminines"
referred to things female, which helps here, although most nouns referring
to females were Class IV.)

This left the Class III (masculine) - Class VI (previously human plural)
connection stronger.  The hard part to explain is how Class II (deverbals,
or mostly) ended up getting Class VI plurals.  My current guess is that
some semantically masculine words got borrowed into Class II, likely from
the language of the gods.

>?????? That is an even of great significance, all right. Are these
>actually the gods, or is there a rationalist explanation. (Not that there
>is any problem with the gods. They've impacted the Yivrian world as well.)
I'm not going to say exactly who/what the gods were, just in case my
book(s) ever get(s) written/published!  Suffice it to say, it is a world
where the gods have been known to turn up in person, if not for the last
thousand years. :)

> > (1) the retroflex series which had resulted from cluster reduction became a
> > palatal series (most likely the gods substituted palatals for retroflex
> > consonants they found difficult, and then were imitated);
>
>What an amusing explanation! One doesn't often think of gods having
>trouble pronouncing things.
And it solved my problem o

> > etymologically a monosyllabic noun that retains its cases).  (Hm, but as I
> > write this I recall that I had previously intended to distinguish inherent
> > and accidental possessives in this language; that means I'll either have to
> > forget that idea or rethink the case system. :(  )
>
>Analogy often works wonders. I'm no stranger to the fact of losing an
>interesting grammatical or vocabulary quirk to the ravages of history.
I've just been working today on analogy wreaking havoc with my beautiful
"irregularities" in adjectival inflection.  Wrote a script to handle Middle
Holic adjectival inflection; I'll have to handle nouns separately by this
stage.

>I found your entire history quite interesting, and very impressive. Keep
>up the good work! Please do come back with more historical explanations
>and questions.
Thank you; I intend to!

Ian