Re: How do diacronic conlangers work?

Jörg Rhiemeier skrev:

>> - People usually have one language or dialect which was
>>    there first in real time, and which often remains central
>>    to the whole edifice, from which various imaginary
>>    ancestors, daughters and siblings (what I call "stages" or
>>    "nodes") radiate.
>>
>>    - It is notably often *not* the protolanguage (the highest
>>      node in the linguistic family tree) which was there
>>      first in real time, but some later form which gets
>>      labeled "classical" or some variety thereof.
>
> This describes exactly the way I do it!  The central language in my work
> is not Proto-Albic but Old Albic, a "classical" language that is spoken
> about 1000 years after Proto-Albic; it is reasonably close to Proto-Albic
> but not the same.  Old Albic is currently the main focus of my work, and
> the other languages will be derived from it - the modern South Albic
> languages forward from Old Albic (which can roughly be equated with
> Proto-South Albic), Proto-Albic backwards from it and the North and West
> Albic languages forward again from there.
It is, as you may have gathered, how I work also: Classical
Sohlob
(then "Sahrab") was there first, and in turn had some kind
of link
to the naming language I made when I was twelve or so.  When I
started to be dissatisfied with some aspects of CS phonology it
spawned a dialect, Kidilib, and then I found myself creating
the ancestral language Kijeb.  Kijeb has undergone two major
revisions, and CS one in order to attune it more to Kidilib.
As Kidilib has emerged as the artistically more 'mature'
language CS has frozen rather than being scrapped. Another
dialect, Heleb, has emerged which shares some features with
each of CS and Kidilib, and the rough edges and inconsistencies
of CS have come to be 'explained away' by declaring that CS
is an artificial literary language based on a dialect related
to early Heleb and influenced by Kidilib.  There is also a
more remotely related language, Linjeb, which originated as
an experiment to derive a rather different phonology from Kijeb,
but which shares with Kidilib some features which are not shared
with CS or Heleb.
More recently I've also discovered a Southern dialect which
explores
some ideas suggested by Heleb, and I have also recently
begun to
discover Pre-Kijeb -- a result of finding Kijeb too regular and
a feeling that its restricted phonotactics must *come* from
somewhere.
I posted about that here recently.


> In my case, the changes have so far mostly been gradual from the point
> when I decided that my languages are NOT based on Tolkien's (the whole
> shebang started as "Nur-ellen", a descendant of Sindarin); that was
> a big abrupt change, actually a complete redesign of the language.
The only language in the Sohlob family which I've abruptly
redesigned is Kijeb, but that OTOH has been redesigned twice!

>>    - "Stages" may go through various "versions" or
>>      "revisions", often without all the stages being
>>      revised at the same time, although a revision in some
>>      place in the family tree -- especially a major one --
>>      may of course have larger or smaller repercussions
>>      throughout the tree.
>>
>>      - Some stages are revised more often and/or more
>>        extensively than others.
>>
>>      - The "central" stage tends to undergo less revision
>>        than other stages.
>>
>>      - Changes to the "central" stage are likely to have more
>>        and heavier repercussions on other stages.
>>
>>      - The protolanguage, being primary in imagined time but
>>        secondary in real time actually tends to get revised
>>        more, usually with a view to make it more plausible as
>>        a common ancestor of sibling nodes lower in the tree.
>
> Yes, in my case.  Classical Old Albic is very stable; Proto-Albic
> is also reasonably stable though less so than Old Albic; the rest
> is pretty much in flux, I am not even sure how many modern Albic
> languages there *are*, and I have already broken up one of them
> (Macaronesian) into a set of four closely related languages,
> because I felt that that would make more sense.
Well, as I wrote above my experience is closely similar,
and Pre-Kijeb is likely go off on a tangent, producing more
remote relatives.

>> -    Unlike real language history the protolanguage is a
>>           secondary product made to fit its daughters.
>>
>>    - Should I use the term "node", as on an imaginary family
>>      tree, throughout instead of "stage". What do native
>>      English speakers think of these terms (stage, node,
>>      version) as I use them?
>
> I'm no native English speakers, but I speak of "nodes" in the
> Albic family tree and "stages" in the development of the languages
> in fictional time; a "version" is an incarnation of the family tree
> in real time.
Great minds think alike!

Is your way of working something that came spontaneous or
the result of a conscious decision?

>> Thanks in advance for your comments!
>
> At your service.
>
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
>
>
>