Vreleksá

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 8:50 pm Post subject: Emitare reduxed

I've been reading some books on historical linguistics, so I've revisited some of the stuff I had been working on and made it a lot more realistic.
I took some of the old Kilhiryui stuff I have on here, and moved that back to a proto-language level and renamed it Proto-Kilhiri-Manyaryuyei. I've then taken that and descended a nice little language off of it, Emitare. Here are some of the things I've done.

Total loss of all final consonants otherwise, creating things like iri/irilhe (light, stative), and ehu/ehukü (eat, negative). Included in this is nasalization, then a shift of nasalized vowels (think in > i~ > e), which has created some interesting ablaut systems in basic cases. For example, PKM has active sire (water), stative siren, while Emitare has sjire/sjira (<sj> = /C/).
Adding r > i / _# (final /4/ to /i/) and then subsequent monophthongization has created even more ablaut: PKM sire/sirer (copulization), Emitare sjire/sjiri.

I've added a consonant dissimilation system (thanks to eldin for the idea), such that no two consonants in a row can have both the same place and manner of articulation. Thus, water-UNIVERSAL is sjireljö (sjire-ljö) while light-UNIVERSAL is irilhuzö (irilh-uljö).

I've been pretty conservative in the grammar, I've retained most of the basic cases and moods without introducing much periphrasis. All the voices except active and adjutative became periphrastic due to phonological change, though.
I've retained the total lack of true pronouns also.

Here are some difference examples:
The moon shines above the world.
PKM: Essal essalhin euyamagi. /es:al es:aKin eMjamaNi/ shine moon-STAT world-SPATIA-SUPERESSIVE
Emi: Eso esalhe öyae agemai. /eso esaKe 2jae agemai/ shine moon.STAT world-GEN.ADJ up-SPATIALLOC (yup, there's some periphrasis)

I want you to go. (more periphrasis)
PKM: Yattaun main eur. /jat:aun main eu4/ go-VOL you-STAT me-AGENT
Emi: Evü ö yate ma. /evy 2 jate ma/ want me.STAT go-INF you.STAT

This man is not good enough to do that.
PKM: Elayui aulunirei yatiwaki yenirei. good-not.enough man-STAT-DEM do-NOM-BEN action-STAT-DEM
Emi: Elayaü olura yatjiai era. good-enough-NEG man-DEM.STAT do-NOM-BEN action-DEM.STAT

So, what do you guys think?

mrtoast2 · Joined: 19 Feb 2008 Posts: 123 Location: Goromonzi

I love it! That's a million times better than I could do to replicate realism in linguistics.
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Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 10:47 pm Post subject:

Thanks ^_^

I'm doing my best to be realistic since this is for a planned conworld on the scale of Zompist's Almea. This is the first in a series I'm going to do descended from what is now PKM. It's going to take a LoT of effort. Razz

achemel · Joined: 29 Mar 2009 Posts: 556 Location: up for debate

Oooo, this is so cool!!! Very Happy

They really look related but still distinct. I've attempted similar things with some of my languages but nothing quite so involved and, allow me to say, awesomely nifty. (^_^) What made you decide on the particular changes you made to develop Emitare?
_________________
I have some small knowledge of:
English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French
I would like to learn:
Italian, Norwegian, Gaelic
Main conlangs:
ddamachel, tadvaradcel, ra cel, lashel, hemnalg, nomah

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 11:22 am Post subject:

Thanks again. ^_^ I just picked changes based on if the language coming out of them sounded the way I wanted it to. It's amazing how you can use the right combination of totally plausible sound changes and get whatever you want out of them.

It's also amazing how those sound changes can make the grammar do things you really never expected it to. It's taken on a bit more of a life of its own than I was expecting.

achemel · Joined: 29 Mar 2009 Posts: 556 Location: up for debate

Ooooh, I see! I've been reworking my first language for the past couple of weeks because I thought maybe I could improve it, and I've discovered that even 6 years ago when I had almost no linguistic knowledge somehow this language had morphemic units and some phonological rules I've only just learned to identify. (^_^) As I've gone along I've found that my revisions include a lot of metathesis and various deletions. I guess that as you've worked on Emitare you've found processes that just work, like final-consonant deletion and such? Do you have exceptions to your rules, or is everything pretty much set?
_________________
I have some small knowledge of:
English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French
I would like to learn:
Italian, Norwegian, Gaelic
Main conlangs:
ddamachel, tadvaradcel, ra cel, lashel, hemnalg, nomah

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 11:45 pm Post subject:

Final-consonant deletion was one of the defining transformations to make Emitare (Kilhiryui has several word-final consonants, but I wanted a strict CV lang), IDK about the rest. I started Kilhiryui after I had accumulated a fairly large amount of knowledge, and I abandoned my last conlang because of that, so I haven't had many revisions. The sound-change rules are mostly set-in-stone, my policy on grammar is 'if it's still distinct after sound changes, keep it, otherwise, find some other way'.

Examples of what I'm talking about are more like these: for example, Kilhiryui has suffixes to mark number instead of number-adjectives, but due to sound changes later stages of Emitare are going to have to have number-adjectives of some kind. Also, due to sound changes eradicating the distinctness of most voices, I've had to make them periphrastic, which has removed the usefulness of Kilhiryui's agentive case, which I originally had no intention of getting rid of.

Interesting about your original lang still having a bunch of that kind of stuff. Kinda says something about the human brain, doesn't it?

achemel · Joined: 29 Mar 2009 Posts: 556 Location: up for debate

Ah.

That's just so cool I think, how even though it's constructed it ends up going its own way like a natural language. (^_^)
_________________
I have some small knowledge of:
English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, French
I would like to learn:
Italian, Norwegian, Gaelic
Main conlangs:
ddamachel, tadvaradcel, ra cel, lashel, hemnalg, nomah