Re: On doubt relief ... (family tree revision)

From: "Andreas Johansson" <and_yo@...>
Subject: On doubt relief ... (family tree revision)


> So, I guess that the rub of the matter is whether I'll accept a further
> reshake along with the chronological one to gain in "internal
plausibility"
> on the sociolinguistic plane. I'm currently leaning towards making the
> revision, but I feel I could use some counseling.
As to what's possible in a language - pretty much anything goes.  If you
want to get rid of the old article "ez", just make up another word "ez" that
means "chicken" or "to dance in circles".  Then the interference between the
two words causes there to be some separation.  In one set of languages, it
is solved by saying "ezda" for "chicken" and leaving "ez" for "the".  In the
other language, "ez" = "the" is dropped, and "ha" is developed as a
workaround that becomes standard.

But by far, the most internally plausible system is to actually have an
ancient language that descends to the modern ones.  Right now, if I want to
make a word in Tháxata, I have two choices.  Either is is a neologism that
the Toran coined themselves in their own language, Tháxata, or it is a word
that's been around the whole time, back from the ancestral tongue.  If it's
from the ancestral tongue, I go back to that language, make the word, then
put it through the sound changes I've already developed, and then I've got a
Tháxata word.  Or of course, they could borrow it from some other language,
but for cultural reasons, that's less likely.