Re: IELang

> Reply-To:
> I had a close-call this week - one disc died and another hiccoughed -
Floppies I hope! About a year ago I had one HD and two Zip disks
-- actually the drive, but it broke the disks, and that's how I
discovered it was amiss -- roll over in the space of two months.
Some 500 MB of stuff just down the abyss... ;-(

> and one of them contained a conlang!
Among the Zip-disks that fell victim of the abovementioned
incident were my pet conlang (Funus) and most of my creative
writings (still haven't given up hope of getting those disks
restored.) I tell you brethren and sistren: *BACK UP FREQUENTLY!*

> Fortunately that was the disc that
> had a disc error and not the disc that asked to be initialised.  I spent
> an evening putting all the good stuff on my harddrive and decided I
> would back it up by telling the list about it.
A more fun and gratifying back-up method, certainly!  (A whim:
back-up parties.  Buy disks/tape, beer, wine, olives and cheese
(or your preffed alternatives), invite your friends -- have them
bring their laptops if they gaot any! -- and take the tedium out
of backing-up! :-)

> So here's a bit about it.  The language is Indo-European - based on the
> fabled language list I found in a copy of the American Heritage
> Dictionary, which I copied out years ago, unfortunately it wasn't my
> dictionary and I've never seen that edition since, a'll diawl!
The root-list, I presume? The stuff was later published as a
special supplement with some editions, maybe still is. It is a
large paperback, so possibly public libraries have tucked it away
somewhere. One can always ask.

These things were compiled by I.E.-nist heavy Calvert Watkins[sp?]
-- or by some of his poor post-graduates ;) -- and ipso facto Good
Stuff. A bit adapted to English-speaking laypeople: since it uses
traditional forms without "laryngeals". The "laryngeals" can
however be easily "reconstructed" if one knows the rules. Neither
does it distinguish between palatal and plain dorsals in the
headwords, since English and its loanword-sources are all centum
languages for the most part, but at the end of each entry there is
given a transcription according to Pokornys classic
"Indogermanisches Woerterbuch", where palatals are indicated with
a circumflex over {g} and {k}. (BTW I'm in the habit of indicating
palatals as /kj, gj, gjh/ and labiovelars as /kv, gv, gvh/, to
keep them distinct from bi-phonemic sequences like /ky/ and /kw/
that also occur. There is the famous item *ekjwos 'horse', but a
tri-phonemic sequence **kyw would be illegal. My guess is that
/kj, gj, gjh/ were actual dorso-mediopalatals like [c, J] and /kv,
gv, gvh/ were true labiovelars [kp, gb] as found e.g. in West
African languages. This may hopefully help to justify my
ASCII-fication, distinguishing them from plain-velar + semivowel
sequences with the help of otherwise unused letters that some
people associate with obstruent sounds.

["a'll diawl": do I guess aright that this is the Brithenig
version of "al'diavolo"? There must have been some sensu strictu
Romans among the proto-Britannican speakers! :-)  Personally I
find the Haitien reflex of DIABOLU, which sounds like "jab",
unusually fitting, in a phonosymbolic sense.]

As it happens I have a xerox copy of the supplement edition, and I
have thought of maybe basing an online list on it. Anyone
interested in helping with such a project? Chances are reasonably
good that one can find an edition of the dictionary at ones
nearest public library. Perhaps some conlangers who know they have
the list available could supply other people living closer to them
than I do with xerox copies.

> I decided to use that language list in a religion in a conculture I
> started working on a few years ago and started hunting around for
> material on PIE grammar when I could find it.
The trad reconstruction of PIE grammar is almost exclusively based
on Greek and Vedic Sanskrit, so a knowledge of the one and a
grammar -- preffably an historical grammar -- of the other will
actually suffice. The actual odds and ends of the PIE verbal
system are still a matter of hot debate. The picture is more than
a little complicated by Hittite/Anatolian evidence, but since the
traditional grammar makes sense as common denominator of the
extra-Anatolian branches a conlang supposed to have split off at a
lower node than Anatolian could still be based on it. Pay close
attention to the particles of Homeric Greek, since Hittite
suggests they loomed larger in PIE than formerly believed!

For those that read German there is an historical grammar of Greek
by Rix that IMHO works better as an intro to I.E. than many works
designed as such.

FYI I believe Proto-Anatolian to be a sister of the ancestor of the
other I.E. languages, with a tree somewhat like this:

    Proto-Proto-IE ("Indo-Anatolian")
        / \
       /   \
  P-Anat.  Trad-PIE
             \
            (Greek,
             Indo-Iranian,
             Italic,
             Celtic,
             Germanic,
             Slavic,
             Baltic...)

Things are aggravated by the fact there seems to be one Southern
and one Northern group within the extra-Anatolian branch, which
split is older than but cut across by the famous centum-satem
split.  Personally I think "satemization" spread from some
east-of-center region somewhat south of the North-South isogloss.
Baltic would be the only Northern satem branch, but the southern
branch is fairly evenly split between centum and satem.  It is
even likely that Greek, Thracian and Armenian form a branch where
one member (Armenian) has become satemized, the others remaining
centum!  Baltic and Germanic are probably closer to each other
than any of them is to Celtic or Slavic.  Apparent Balto-Slavic
isoglosses are due to long contact after the primary split, and
the fact that both are satem while Germanic is not.

> I'll start with some information on its alphabet. For reasons I
> have since forgotten
They might have adopted the script while being Achaemenian subjects.

> I decided that Vokhomos (the language) should
> be written in an Aramaic font - unfortunate really since I don't
> have the software for writting right to left, never mind! So I'll
> dedicate the rest of this post to the letters and their values in
> Vokhomos and invite feedback.
> The name Vokhomos comes from the verb form meaning 'we speak', but it is
> declined as a masculine noun.
Couldn't it be derived from *wokv-dhgho:mos 'human speech'? It has
the look of plausibility. (But I've always been musing about a
possible lang where something *funkier* happens to those
dorso-apical clusters... They seem like the stuff from which a new
set of palatal affricates could arise, so that e.g. *dhgho:m would
become "dzho:m" while the old palatal stops would become palatal
fricatives e.g. "zholto-" < *gjolto- 'gold'. I'm an irredeemable
satemophile! :-)

>
> Alaf  /a/
> Bet  /b/
> Bet with seyame  /v/
In many versions of the Aramaic alphabet there are both closed
(similar to our lower-case {g}) and open (similar to our {y})
forms of Beth, a fact that may be exploited.  There are similar
alternative Waws (similar to {9} and {?} respectively), but I'ld
use them for different vowels.  Avestan has an {f} that is a Pe
with an elongated stem (though the stem has become a bowl in its
immediate ancestor, the Pehlevi alphabet.)  Alternatively it may
be derived from a {pb} ligature.  Both would be nice ways to
derive new letters.

> Gamal  /g/
> Dalat  /d/
> He  /a/ (used as the feminine ending)
Would there be any special reason to keep this distinct from
Aleph?  My natural inclination would be Aleph /a/, He /e/, Ayin
/o/, for obvious reasons.  Or was *h2 preserved in early
Vokhomos? ;)

> Waw  /v/, /o/, /u/, /au/
C.f. what I said about Beth!

> Zayn  /dZ/
> Het  /x/
> Tet  /ts/
> Yud  /y/, /e/, /i/, /ai/
> Kaf  /k/  (used if the next letter in the stem is Yud)
Why this distinction?  Seing that /dZ/--/tS/ are paired but /ts/
appears to have no */dz/ counterpart I wonder if there are no /z/
and /dz/?  If there are I would have Kaph = /tS/, Qoph = /k/,
Sade = /tS/, Zayin = /z/ and Sade+Zayin = /dZ/.

> Lamad  /l/
> Mim  /m/
> Nun  /n/
> Semkat  /s/
> E  /0/  (marks vowel length, I'll explain below)
I.e. Ayin, obviously. Cool mapping, but it could also be used to
form ligatures with other letters to eke out the vowel-inventory,
using simple doubling or a diacritic for length. I might imagine:
(Key: {A}leph, h{E}, {W}aw, {Y}od, {O}=Ayin, {%} front rounded v.)

A = /a/ AA = /a:/
E = /e/ EE = /e:/
OY = /i/        OYY = /i:/
AO = /o/        AOO = /o:/
OW = /u/        OWW = /o:/
OE = /%/        OOE = /%:/
(O) = /@/

[snip]

>
> Suggestions to relieve confusion, or enhance pseudo-historicity welcome.
Hope I've been of some help.  I should point out that I'm thinking
in terms of an Imperial Aramaic hand, with some peeks at later
forms.  Those Ayin ligatures would IMHO look real funky in such a
hand.

> - andrew.

/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <bpj@...> <melroch@...>
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