Tips for Backwards Derivation?

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Isfendil
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Tips for Backwards Derivation?

Post by Isfendil »

Alright, I seem to have wrote myself into a conlanging corner, and I'm asking if my line of thought is a possible avenue of escape (I am also asking for any advice on said line of thought). I have an Indo European language. It is my first conlang, to the point where it actually existed before I knew anything about linguistics. It is also my largest, but the trouble is- It's in its own unique branch of the Indo Euro family, and I wrote it first. I now need to get started on distant cousins, descendants of a hypothetical proto language, but the thing is, I don't know how to go backwards from all of this assumed work I did. Can I just backwards derive? Is that even possible? Furthermore, I also don't know the minutia of the process of daughter languages drifting from their parents. Is there a concise location of applicable features one... applies to their proto-languages to begin deriving daughters? Is just reversing them a thing that I can do?

Any and all assistance is appreciated.
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Re: Tips for Backwards Derivation?

Post by shimobaatar »

Isfendil wrote:Alright, I seem to have wrote myself into a conlanging corner, and I'm asking if my line of thought is a possible avenue of escape (I am also asking for any advice on said line of thought). I have an Indo European language. It is my first conlang, to the point where it actually existed before I knew anything about linguistics. It is also my largest, but the trouble is- It's in its own unique branch of the Indo Euro family, and I wrote it first. I now need to get started on distant cousins, descendants of a hypothetical proto language, but the thing is, I don't know how to go backwards from all of this assumed work I did. Can I just backwards derive? Is that even possible? Furthermore, I also don't know the minutia of the process of daughter languages drifting from their parents. Is there a concise location of applicable features one... applies to their proto-languages to begin deriving daughters? Is just reversing them a thing that I can do?

Any and all assistance is appreciated.
I'm not clear on what you mean here for the most part. For one thing, what do you mean by "assumed work"?

Backwards derivation, if I understand what you're referring to, is possible, but very, very difficult.

Also, if you take a protolanguage, there's essentially an infinite number of changes you could apply to it to derive daughter languages. Some changes are more likely than others, but that depends on the nature of the protolanguage. Hopefully that makes sense.
Curlyjimsam
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Re: Tips for Backwards Derivation?

Post by Curlyjimsam »

I'd agree that backwards derivation is difficult. Last time I tried it (many years ago), I ultimately decided it was easier to give up and start again from scratch. But it can be made to work if you're prepared to put in the effort. A word of advice, though - you will almost certainly have to change things in your existing language, and you shouldn't be afraid to do that.

A handy tool may be the reversible sound change applier at https://000024.org/rsca.html - once you've got some idea of what sound changes you want, the rsca will give you a list of possible historical forms for any given word.
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Isfendil
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Re: Tips for Backwards Derivation?

Post by Isfendil »

Curlyjimsam wrote:I'd agree that backwards derivation is difficult. Last time I tried it (many years ago), I ultimately decided it was easier to give up and start again from scratch. But it can be made to work if you're prepared to put in the effort. A word of advice, though - you will almost certainly have to change things in your existing language, and you shouldn't be afraid to do that.

A handy tool may be the reversible sound change applier at https://000024.org/rsca.html - once you've got some idea of what sound changes you want, the rsca will give you a list of possible historical forms for any given word.
Thank you for the recommendation and the warning... I will keep that in mind. Luckily, after finally changing my first person pronoun to a better form after resisting changing it from the original (which I made before learning linguistics), I don't think I'm all that resistant to language change anymore [xD] .
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qwed117
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Re: Tips for Backwards Derivation?

Post by qwed117 »

Isfendil wrote:
Curlyjimsam wrote:I'd agree that backwards derivation is difficult. Last time I tried it (many years ago), I ultimately decided it was easier to give up and start again from scratch. But it can be made to work if you're prepared to put in the effort. A word of advice, though - you will almost certainly have to change things in your existing language, and you shouldn't be afraid to do that.

A handy tool may be the reversible sound change applier at https://000024.org/rsca.html - once you've got some idea of what sound changes you want, the rsca will give you a list of possible historical forms for any given word.
Thank you for the recommendation and the warning... I will keep that in mind. Luckily, after finally changing my first person pronoun to a better form after resisting changing it from the original (which I made before learning linguistics), I don't think I'm all that resistant to language change anymore [xD] .
If you still have the sound changes and their origin, then you can just "subtract" a few, and there, you'll be at your destination. Curlyjimsam's option is probably the best though. Alternatively, you could make the language the protolang, and make descendants off of that, a la Latin/Sanskrit.
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