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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 20:58 
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Aszev wrote:
The proto-word is sinθ

I was wrong by the vowel! :mrgreen:
Aszev wrote:
Pink: sint (didn't count ɕint as wrong tho, because it was close enough)

I really suggest that in future games we should play by the rules of historical reconstruction.
If 100% of words have ɕ-, you don't expect the proto-form to be s-.
Also, you have 14 words with -i(i)-, but 17 with -e(e)-, so one would expect the proto-form to have -e- as well.

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 21:05 
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Maximillian wrote:
Aszev wrote:
The proto-word is sinθ

I was wrong by the vowel! :mrgreen:
Indeed! It pained me a bit that I couldn't give you a last push towards a higher vowel [:P]

Maximillian wrote:
Aszev wrote:
Pink: sint (didn't count ɕint as wrong tho, because it was close enough)

I really suggest that in future games we should play by the rules of historical reconstruction.
If 100% of words have ɕ-, you don't expect the proto-form to be s-.
Also, you have 14 words with -i(i)-, but 17 with -e(e)-, so one would expect the proto-form to have -e- as well.

The point has already been taken about the /ɕ/, although as I said I didn't consider those answers erroneous.

However as for the vowel, I'll politely disagree. It just doesn't work like that. I do see your point, of course, and I'll try to keep this trap in mind in the future.

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 21:06 
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So for the next installation, our researchers have travelled across Eastern Europe looking for cognates. This is the current extent of their research:

Image

However, these researches are excellent at finding cognates, but they lack other skills needed to understand their findings. It is now up to you to:

• Find the proto-word!
• Identify the sub-families and their possible proto-words!
• Draw the lines between the possible various stages of evolution!

To clarify some rules to add to the challenge:

- You may only suggest one form at a time. If you suggest multiple results I will overlook them.
- I will say if a suggestion is correct, but not if it's wrong. If I don't reply to your answer for a while, chances are you've got it wrong. I will, however, start dropping various hints if progress is slow [:)]

I think this one is a bit harder than the first one, but I think you'll be able to handle it!

Enjoy!

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 22:06 
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This space outlined in red is easily explained with *temni or *tepni or something very similar. I don't know if it forms a coherent sub-family, but nothing in that red space is more than a few sound changes from *temni/*tepni.

Image


And this area is easily explained from *tepim.

Image


The problem is this area. I can't think of anything that could be the original form of these words which bares any resemblance to the others, or if they even constitute one grouping. How does initial *t > *0 ever?

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 22:15 
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brandrinn wrote:
The problem is this area. I can't think of anything that could be the original form of these words which bares any resemblance to the others, or if they even constitute one grouping. How does initial *t > *0 ever?

Image

I could imagine something like himɹi:*, since ɹ to j is attested.

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 22:39 
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Solarius wrote:
I could imagine something like himɹi:*, since ɹ to j is attested.

This is iffy, in my opinion. Several of the forms have n. And since n appears many times on other parts of the map, I think r\ > n is much less likely than n > r\. But either way it's a lot to ask of any consonant to stand in for r\, n, and a palatal. I think the palatal is probably just the product of environment. And if we assume r\ and n are from the same origin, we get the following forms:

(h)imi: (might also include iJi:)
mini: (might also include mir\i:)
imni: (might also include imr\i:)

So we know we have a long final i, and an m. *himini: would be a plausible ancestor, but one or both of those vowels might be epenthetic (this would explain why sometimes we have mr\ and mn clusters and sometimes not). So the original might be *himni:. Then again, the h only shows up in one form, so it could be like a German glottal stop. Some Native American languages insert an h before initial vowels. So the simplest possible original might be *imni:. The problem is two fold. First, there could easily be things hiding in the original form that simply aren't visible in the modern forms (like the initial consonant, which may have disappeared without a trace), and second, none of the possible original forms we've suggested bear any resemblance to anything that could plausibly be the original form of the other languages. For example, the protolanguage almost certainly used *t or something similar in the original form. If not, then Aszev is just fucking with us.

EDIT: OH! I think I've got a really good idea of what it might be. But I don't want to dominate the thread, so I'm going to hold my tongue until someone else has had a chance to try it.


Last edited by brandrinn on Fri 03 Feb 2012, 23:03, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 22:57 
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Aszev wrote:
It just doesn't work like that.

How does it work then?

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 23:15 
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The proto-word must be *tewni or something like that.

I would analyze the South-West language that way:
*tewni
> *em'ni > *im'ni:
>> im'ɾi:
>> mi'ni: > mi'ɾi:
>> i'mi:, hi'mi:
>> *i'ni: > i'ɲi:

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 23:23 
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Milyamd wrote:
The proto-word must be *tewni or something like that.

I would analyze the South-West language that way:
*tewni
> *em'ni > *im'ni:
>> im'ɾi:
>> mi'ni: > mi'ɾi:
>> i'mi:, hi'mi:
>> *i'ni: > i'ɲi:


But then how do we explain forms like "tepim?"


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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 23:34 
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I'm leaning towards something like tjVmnV.

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PostPosted: Fri 03 Feb 2012, 23:59 
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Aszev wrote:
Yellow: sɛːθ

Uh... How were we supposed to reconstruct instead of *t here?

Quote:
Pink: sint (didn't count ɕint as wrong tho, because it was close enough)

...and because there was literally no way to reconstruct *s from the data avalaible here? [;)]

Quote:
Dark blue: hiːθ

Again, why ? The available data points to... well, *hiix, insofar as its points to dark blue being its own subgroup at all.


Maximillian wrote:
Aszev wrote:
It just doesn't work like that.

How does it work then?

Thing is, you can't just look at the "present-day" forms and try to reconstruct the original proto-form straight from those. You need to look at the intermediate proto-languages. In this case, three of the five intermediate proto-languages seemed to point to *i and a fourth could equally well have had *i or *e.

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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 00:51 
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brandrinn wrote:
How does initial *t > *0 ever?

t > T > h > Ø would be my first guess.

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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 00:53 
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Woah, didn't know this was here. Seems really cool!
As for this latest one, I'm guessing *tepne. Perhaps the proto-language had a length distinction and short vowels reduced in many descendants, which explains the large amount that have /i/ as the first vowel. My explanation for the ones without initials or with /h/ initials is that *t went through a chain shift before front vowels something like t > s > h (> 0). the *p explains the curveball down in the southeast area where there's the glottal stop and whatnot. I don't really have an explanation for the /y/ up north except for maybe vowel harmony or duplication or something.


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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 01:30 
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Edit: Sorry, I didn't read the additional rules before posting a fairly comprehensive solution. I'm hiding it now, about half an hour after I originally posted it, so others can still try figuring everything out themselves. As a contribution to that, I suggest that the last common ancestor of all the words with initial ts is something like *tsyːni(ː), which might be derived from Theta's proto-form *tepne via *tebne → *tevne → *tewne → *tiwni → *tsiwni. Incidentally, that route passes through something that could be the proto-form for all the words with a -vn- cluster.

Spoiler: show
Image

The protoword of the red group could be either *tepim or *tipim. I'm going with *e because most of the other groups point to an original mid vowel.

The green group clearly has a protoword of the form *tsVnV. The first vowel is almost certainly *y, and the second one is probably *i (the rounded final vowels in the northernmost dialects might be explained by rounding harmony). It seems that vowel length is closely correlated to stress, but the diphthongization in two languages in the north whose immediate neighbours have short stressed vowels hints at a phonemic long vowel in the first syllable. This is supported by the fact that the other groups all indicate that there was once another consonant before what has become *n in Proto-Green. A subgroup in the middle of the green area has word-final stress, and all of those stressed final vowels are long, so it could even be that the true protoword was *tsyːniː.

The blue group looks fairly easy: Most languages have a *v, but some seem to have lost it. The predominant reflex of the final vowel is /a/, but some dialects have /i/ instead so I reconstruct an intermediate *e, which is actually retained in the southwesternmost dialect of this group. In the northwest, the boundaries are a bit fuzzy, it could well be that the two languages with /tɛːna/ in fact belong to blue rather than purple.

All languages in the purple group seem to have originated from a word with two consecutive medial nasals, the first of which was labial and the second of which was coronal. The medial /ə/ in two of the western dialects looks like an epenthetic vowel to me. The final vowel is again ambiguous, but the clear majority of /a/ and the absence of /i/ suggest something more open than in the blue group, which is why I'm reconstructing *a.

The orange group has clearly lost the initial /t/ of the other subgroups. The glottal fricative in the northernmost dialect suggests that there was an intermediate form with a spirant , although judging only from the data from within this group, we'd have to reconstruct *h. All the orange languages have shifted to word-final stress, and the final vowel is always long. The /i/ in between the two remaining consonants in two dialects seems to be epenthetic, especially because that would explain the occasional /ɾ/ as dissimilation of *n from an immediately preceding *m. /ɲ/ in the two southwestern languages also looks like a plausible simplification of a cluster *mn.

The olive group is the most diverse subgroup. The glottal stop indicates that there must have been a plosive in the protoword, and the rounding in /tʰeʊm/ and /tʰøːm/ suggests that this plosive might have been labial (although the rounding might also have been induced the /m/ alone). Since not all languages have aspiration and none of the other subgroups have it, I suspect it's a later innovation, as is the vowel nasalisation in the northwestern dialects. Vowel length, however, is probably original because only one dialect doesn't have either a long vowel or a diphthong, but it appears even before a coda consonant in two of the languages. So, *teːpm or maybe *teːʔm.

--

For the common protolanguage, I suggest *tepne or *tebne, where either or both of the vowels might have been long. The fact that the final vowel was lost in some languages from four subgroups suggests a short vowel though; all of the long final vowels could be explained by open-syllable lengthening under stress. For the first vowel, compensatory lengthening is a plausible explanation for most of the long instances, and in those olive dialects that suggest otherwise, the length might have come from a following voiced plosive. Lastly, when compared to the forms in other branches of the family, the fact that the final nasal in the red group is labial suggests that the /i/ in the second syllable there is epenthetic.

Sound changes:

Red: ˈtebne → ˈtepneˈtepn̩ˈtepm̩ˈtepim
Green: ˈtebne → ˈtewneˈtiwniˈtsiwniˈtsyːni
Blue: ˈtebne → ˈtevne
Purple: ˈtebne → ˈtemne'temna
Orange: ˈtebne → ˈtemneˈtimnitimˈniθimˈniθimˈniː (→ himˈniː)
Olive: ˈtebne → teːpneteːpn̩teːpm̩ (→ teːʔm̩)

It looks like there are three even more basic groups in this. Orange is almost certainly not a first-level division, but an offshoot of the purple group. Blue and green might also form a closer subfamily, and even red and olive might be more closely related to each other than to anything else despite their geographic separation:

Proto-Purple-Orange: *temne
Proto-Blue-Green: *tevne
Proto-Red-Olive: *teːpm̩

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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 04:33 
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Xonen, you are of course right. You'd kinda need to know the actual answers to make sense of that, a mistake I'll admit having made here.

In general I've made a few slipups like this, and I think this also happened in the second map. This isn't to screw with you of course, thus far I'll blame inexperience with this particular form of game [:)]

In any case I hope that the game is still appreciated despite its flaws. I certainly am enjoying watching you guys reconstruct things, and I'll try to give out hints to patch up the stupidities I might have created in the map!

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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 04:47 
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Cedh: A splendid breakdown! I'll give some answers and hints to the extent I feel able to without spoiling too much [:)]

Using your colors,

[tick] Your groupings are with one exception correct.

[tick] The proto-word for most of the words in your purple area is indeed ˈtemna !

[tick] Likewise, you are absolutely right in that the Proto-Orange word is himˈniː !

[tick] You are also strikingly correct about Orange being a Purple offshoot! (Alas your reconstructed Proto-Purple-Orange word is incorrect however!)

[cross] You are on the right track about Proto-Green, but not quite there!

[info] As you observe, it is not as simple as simply a bunch of individual first-level divisions.

[info] The Purple-Orange split is a third level split.

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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 07:40 
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If I may, I believe the misclassified language is te:na, which should be to the east, in the *tevna group.

As for the large northern group (the ts group) it's hard to settle on a common reconstruction, because later forms could easily be derived from earlier ones. For example, tsemni: works pretty well, with rounded vowels coming later.

I noticed something in all of these entries. All words in which the final vowel is long, stress the last syllable. If the final vowel is short, then stress shifts to the first syllable. Is this a family-wide consistent rule, or is it coincidence?


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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 14:25 
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Aszev wrote:
In any case I hope that the game is still appreciated despite its flaws. I certainly am enjoying watching you guys reconstruct things, and I'll try to give out hints to patch up the stupidities I might have created in the map!

Don't worry, it's still fun. Too bad I slept through the start of this new challenge, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up.

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[oʊ̯n ˈgɾaːtɪ sɛmː jɛtː baɾn ˈkʰʋɛːnɛɾ jaː ˈsʏd͡ʑːɪ jɛtː laː ʊmː ˈdɛɪ̯an]


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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 17:23 
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brandrinn wrote:
If I may, I believe the misclassified language is te:na, which should be to the east, in the *tevna group.

Correct!

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PostPosted: Sat 04 Feb 2012, 20:02 
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@cedh: Wow, your map resembled mine so much that I'm just gonna expand on your work a bit.

My first thought was that the purple and blue groups were very closely related though. I guess they could form a sort of continuum with the orange group. *ˈtevne → *ˈtemna isn't too hard to believe. If the proto-red word is wrong, I'm gonna suggest *ˈtipim.

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Ón gráti sem jett barn kvéner jag syggji jett lag um deiðan...
[oʊ̯n ˈgɾaːtɪ sɛmː jɛtː baɾn ˈkʰʋɛːnɛɾ jaː ˈsʏd͡ʑːɪ jɛtː laː ʊmː ˈdɛɪ̯an]


Last edited by Ceresz on Sat 04 Feb 2012, 20:35, edited 1 time in total.

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