On doubt relief ... (family tree revision)

I'm currently carrying out a revision of the chronology of my "main"
coniverse. I'm now pretty much set on the course for the revision, and it's
really not on-topic for this list either. However, as an addendum to this
chronological change, I'm considering carrying thru a revision of the family
tree of the Taianzh languages (to which Tairezazh belongs). The old tree
(including only the branches relavant for the revision) was like this:

|                       Old Taianzh
|                         /         \   \________
|                        /            \                 \
|                Klaish            Parklest        Old Sireazh
|               /       \             /        \                  \
|   Tairezazh  Steienzh  Telenzh  Tsarizh      Sireazh

The new tree it'd be:

|                       Old Taianzh
|                         /             \________
|                        /                             \
|                 Klaish                            Parklest
|                 /  \  \ \__________                 \
|               /     \  \______        \                  \
|              /        \            \        \                  \
|   Tairezazh  Steianzh  Telenzh  Tsarizh      Sireazh

The change to the right would, of course, really only be a transplant of the
name "Parklest", but to the left the change is slightly radical - the old
Klaish and Parklest branches are merged into one.

The reasons for a change is that a) what little work I've done on Telenzh
and Tsarizh appears to be not much more distant from Tairezazh and Steianzh
than those are from one another, and b) within the fictional history, it'd
make more sense if Telenzh and Tsarizh descended from Klaish rather than a
sister of it. There isn't really that much linguistic material that'd have
to be scrapped, and among what'd have to go is the Tsarizh nominative plural
ending _-enen_, which I'm disliking anyway. I may have to scrap the Telenzh
definite article too, which I'm less happy about.

I'll have to scrap it if I decide that it is too unlikely that a language
that's got a definite article jettisons it and replaces it with a derivative
of a demonstrative. Are any such examples known in real-world languages?
Currently the Telenzh article is _ha_  - the replacement 'd be _ez_,
boringly identical to the Tairezazh and Steienzh ones.

The chief other argument against a change is, I'm afraid, simply that I
dislike changing long-standing ideas. It would also place closer constraints
on any future work on Telenzh and Tsarizh I may undertake - if that'll be a
help or a problem is not possible to say at this point.

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.


              Andreas


PS I'm also considering getting rid of the term "Taianzh". But, I shall
postpone agonizing about that till another post, probably to turn up during
the week.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

Replies