Quick Diachronics Challenge

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sangi39
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Davush wrote: 28 Nov 2017 10:59 Will we get the answer? Seems about the right time for a new challenge if anybody wanted to make one.
Since nobody updated their answers I think it would be Auvon's turn, but a reveal would be nice [:)]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Auvon »

I'll start working on something, assuming qwed will reveal it soon and no one has any new guesses.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by qwed117 »

Yeah, Auvon's the winner.
The answer was *'ekonom. The *sk cluster came from the palatization of the k, not an original cluster. The original location of the stress makes it more likely than just *skonom. The central *o becomes *we in a couple of languages, and not the reverse. There wasn't any true treeing, however.
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Auvon »

(I expect to get this up by Saturday, sorry for the wait).
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Auvon »

The extension has been extended; I'm almost done with sound changes for all ten languages, after that I plan to run around 30 proto-words thrhough sound changes, although I'm not sure if I'll actually do that much. I'm doing mainly binary branching with a few areal features. Maybe expect it by the middle of the week, hopefully not too much later.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Auvon wrote: 11 Dec 2017 02:12 The extension has been extended; I'm almost done with sound changes for all ten languages, after that I plan to run around 30 proto-words thrhough sound changes, although I'm not sure if I'll actually do that much. I'm doing mainly binary branching with a few areal features. Maybe expect it by the middle of the week, hopefully not too much later.
So looking forward to it [:)] I really enjoy these challenges
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Auvon »

Here it is, the long awaited and longer procrastinated diachronics challenge, vol. something. [PDF warning, I can provide screenshots of the pages if you dislike PDFs that much.]

Have at it, folks.

Edit (now Edits): The little vertical bar thing is stress marker, not lateral; TNR apparently doesn't like that at small sizes. c4 should not have that line break. And the voiceless diacritic isn't composing with the nasals, and there's probably more – please just use the image to reduce confusion. Blame Google Docs, not me. Here is an image of the chart, which looks much less shitty.
Last edited by Auvon on 19 Dec 2017 04:43, edited 2 times in total.
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Inkcube-Revolver
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Inkcube-Revolver »

My goodness. Did you get a grant while you were at it? The presentation and production value behind these challenges sure has gone up over time.
I like my languages how I like my women: grammatically complex with various moods and tenses, a thin line between nouns and verbs, and dozens upon dozens of possible conjugations for every single verb.
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sangi39
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Inkcube-Revolver wrote: 19 Dec 2017 03:58 My goodness. Did you get a grant while you were at it? The presentation and production value behind these challenges sure has gone up over time.
[+1]

Holy mother of god! [:O] This could get interesting [:)]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Spoiler:
Even just trying to group them together is proving to be a pain, lol.

I've tried my best to ignore what might be areal features for the moment, like there seems to be a lot of vowel syncope in the Western languages that probably spread out in a wave before or after some other changes, so you get words in one language looking like words in another language in some ways, but then like words in a different language again in other ways.

I have grouped Language F and Language J, together, though, which I feel might be a mistake, but I can't quite tell yet. Language F seems to be pretty divergent as a member of the Eastern grouping.

Image
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
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So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Auvon »

I'm not going to provide any commentary on guesses just yet, but just FYI sangi, the initial nasal of 2 in a c g is voiceless and it seems you've accidentally copied it down as voiced.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Auvon wrote: 19 Dec 2017 22:26 I'm not going to provide any commentary on guesses just yet, but just FYI sangi, the initial nasal of 2 in a c g is voiceless and it seems you've accidentally copied it down as voiced.
Oh, so I have. I'll have to amend that. I don't think that changes my groupings at all, but it does make Word 2 a bit easier to work out, I guess [:)]
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
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So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Ohhh, languages A, C and G have phonemic vertical vowel systems (3, 2 and 3 vowels respectively)! That might make things a bit easier (I hope)

EDIT: Oh, and so does Language J
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Spoiler:
Right, this is mostly going to be working on possible history, rather than the proto-words themselves, and I'm only looking at what I think constitutes an Eastern grouping for the moment.

So, "Proto-Eastern" (Proto-FJAGC) seems to have had a voiced/voiceless distinction in the plosives (in Language A and Language G this become an aspiration distinction), as well as what appears to be at least two laterals, possiblely and *tɬ.

All but Language F had a large collapse of the vowel system, with *i and *u merging into , *e and *o merging into and *a remaining *a. There may also have been an original which has variously become (when long?) or remained (when short?).

There seems to be a divide between FJ and ACG based on either palatalisation or de-palatalisation, but I can't tell yet what's going on (there's a chance it could be both given , but there might be distinction between two series of sibilants in Proto-Eastern.

There's similarly a divide based on nasal vowels, which I assume were original to Proto-Eastern, but lost in FJ (what look like good candidate conditions don't really hold up).

The glottalisation in AG seems to be the result of cluster simplification, namely *tk (through intermediate *ʔk), but the glottal stops seem to have a number of origins, the main ones seem to correspond to intervocalic and post-vocalic *n (I'm calling it *n for the time being, but looking briefly to the west I suspect this might actually either be two phonemes or on phoneme resulting from a merger, mostly of a alveolar nasal and an alveolar approximant), intervocalic *tɬ and syllable-final *t.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Auvon »

I'll provide some very vague commentary seeing as you're the only one working on this currently (although others may be?), of course I expect this to take longer than usual. (To everyone else, have a shot even if you aren't sure; I certainly wouldn't be able to so well on this).
Some of your theories are fairly accurate; others not so much – but many of them seem to get the broad trends, even if specifics are quite off. Looking back at this, there's at least one segment category that's not easily reconstructable, possibly more.

As a sort of hint, I'll provide the number of sound changes from PTia to each language. Note, not all rules apply widely, some don't at all; some rules are fairly radical while others may be minor.
Spoiler:
a:31
b:33
c:30
d:27
e:25
f:28
g:33
h:23
i:24
j:21
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

I'm going to ignore the hints in spoilers for the moment, lol. I assume there are other people working on this, it's just a pretty challenging... challenge. I'm just posting stuff as and when it comes to me, keeping each post relatively short so that you don't get bogged down trying to respond to a wall of text.
Spoiler:
And a preliminary reconstruction for Proto-Eastern:

1: te'Remgʷo
2: ˈŋ̥ʷo:sose
3: 'kʷãɰətkə
4: aŋ̥'kʷãɰətkə
5: 'səRəɰ
6: an'səRəɰ
7: xnəːRaʔ
8: ka'ɬuʔ
9: 'suRetɬə
10: an'sais


I think R might be an alveolar approximant, most likely *r (I seem to recall a similar shift of /r/ to /ʔ/ in Late Ancient Egyptian, and /r/ to /n/ isn't unheard of).

I'm hazarding a guess that nasalisation was partially present in Proto-Eastern, but maybe just allophonically, in words 3 and 4 only, but then triggered by the loss of a nasal consonant.

Looking at it, there might have only been a single sibilant in Proto-Eastern, though. The "irregular" correspondences look like they can be explained conditionally pretty simply
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by sangi39 »

Trying to pin down the phoneme inventory of the proto-language:
Spoiler:
/p t ts tɬ k kʷ q/
/n ŋ/
/s ɬ/
/w r l/

/i (y?) u/
/e o/
/a/

/t s n r/ might be apical vs. laminal /ts l/

Aspiration and voicing distinctions in the daughter languages appear to come from a phonemic split conditioned by the presence of an immediately preceding nasal or approximant, although in other language the MOA assimilation was reversed, leading to the rise of voiceless nasals.

I'm not 100% sure, but there seems to be six vowels in the proto-language, not just 5.

If I had to guess at a syllable structure, I'd say (N)CV(C), with Language H showing a very extreme example of cluster breaking.
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by loglorn »

It's almost more interesting to watch sangi do it than to work out the actual thing. On the other hand, I'd probably be doing it were it not for my whole family being here for the holidays
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Auvon »

No problem, I'm fine to wait for a while.
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Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge

Post by Davush »

I would love to join but I fear this is well beyond my capabilities and anything I do now will be a rip off sangi's attempt. I am enjoying following this though.
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