Diachronics

I've recently joined the Language Creation Society, and I hope to have a website up soon, though I have very much enjoyed Frathwiki's hospitality.  The size of this undertaking is quickly getting away from me, to the point where I don't think I would've begun, had I known!  Let me bring you up to speed on the ever-blurring line between fact and fiction.

First, what is true.
The Hebrew Bible - as we have it in the Massoretic Text tradition - is a hypothetical reconstruction of what actually pronounced.  This is not to say that we don't have an accurate transmission of the original text.  But the Semitic abjads until ca. 700 A.D. are just that, adjads.  That is, they record the consonants and not the vowels.  The Massorites (that school of copyists who follow Ben-Asher and his particular system of vowels and other marks) did their best guess as to what had been pronounced by their ancestors before Aramaic had swept in an irrevocably altered their language.  Even stranger, there are historical layers and dialects preserved in the original consonantal text which even different original speakers would've found perplexing.  Also, as the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown, tiny variations in spelling had crept in from the exile until the foundations of the various schools of pointing arose.

All of this intrique leads to a great deal of difficulty in reconstructing what Paleo/Proto/Early Hebrew sounded like.  This is layer of Hebrew is (consonantally) preserved in Genesis 49, Exodus 15, Numbers 23-24, Deuteronomy 32-33, Judges 5, Psalms 18 and 68.  The next layer - called Early Biblical Hebrew - comes in two flavors.  In the North of Israel, there is greater preservation of the spoken form of the common people, but uncommon influence of Phoenician.  In the South of Judah, there is a great literary style which perserve older form, but is influenced by literary styles of the upper crust societies from around the Fertile Crescent at the time, especially Akkadian.  Here, the Psalm of Habakkuk is exhibit A.  Next, as the exile(s) began, Aramaic became entrenched as the lingua franca of the day and all the Jews/Israelites were bilingual.  Unfortunately for our reconstruction, the Aramaic idea of mater lectionis becomes very prominent now, at the same time as a plethora of sound changes are modifying the Hebrew of the people's faulty memory.

Now, for the fiction.
I am imagining a group of mixed people from the Levant  - but predominantly Hebrews - leaving ca. 1000 B.C. for the Philippines.  There are several waves of immigration before a Hittite and a Sabean scholar show up.  The people are in danger of being completely assimilated into the Proto-Malayo/Austronesian language around them.  But some of them remembered the old ways and speech, but these two rallied them around the cause of written language, a unique claim-to-fame for these workers in an illiterate society.  These two "crafted" a language pastiche that could be understood by all the people together.  Then, a curious thing happened: the prophet Jonah came to them and reunited the people around YHWH, the god of non-Hebrews too.
Through the end of the 8th century B.C., this community received news from as far afield as Spain, copying and redacted Scripture to suit their brand of theology.  They played a crucial role as Scribes to the balangay of the Philippines, keeping all records carved on bamboo and tree-bark.  Only in a secret cave did they write on clay, and even that wasn't fired.  Only a collection of tablets and ostra from the end of their time (near 100 B.C.) survived, vast though it was.


So, my task is vast.  Reconstruct what I think the Paleo-Hebrew texts of the Bible were, transmogrify them into an Ancient Filippino setting, write them in Japanese characters.  Awesome!

Vocalic Roots

So, I'm attempting to conceive of a proto-lang that is completely nuts. Basically, I want to start somewhere very unnatural and make it as natural as I can. Semitic language begin with tri-consonantal roots. What if some kind of tri-vocalic root system arose? What would the inherent properties of the vowels be? What would left open for completion in the verbal and nominal systems? The easy way would've been to just come up with more than 20 vowels (plain, nasal, long, unrounded, etc.) and less than 10 consonants, to parallel the 30ish consonants and 10ish vowels of Proto-Semitic. But taking a step back towards the naturalistic, I saw vowels don't behave like that. Vowels affect thing around them (assuming they're in charge) or they get affected by the consonants around them. So I looked into vowel harmony, and I thought, "I should have consonant harmony" and not just of the mutational variety either. The next big decision is to make everything voiced. Most likely, this is because my biggest conlang is all unvoiced, but I also think the language is pro-singing, i.e. pro-voiced. The four biggest categories for consonants that we would want vowels to spawn are

• nasals
• stops
• fricatives
• approximants

'''Nasalization''' is easy enough to understand. (Pre-)'''Glottalization''' might explain stops. Approximants are often co-articulated, e.g. /j/ is just palatalization, /w/ is labialization, etc. '''Fricitivization''' is not a word, but Chinese linguists were so eager to add ɿ, ʅ, ʮ, and ʯ that there must at least be some linguistics who think it ought to be. /i/ and /j/ are related, as are /u/ and /w/. It is disputed, but rhotic approximants come from rhotacized vowels, and /e/ might be related to /l/. I am pretty good at a Chewbacca impression, and I get it by co-articulating everything with a uvular trill/approximant. This can be done with any other voiced approximant and will all the vowels (though /i/ is most difficult). Lastly, some consonants can only be made by getting the tongue all the way out of the mouth. This could be called (and I'm totally making this up) '''Advanced Tongue Tip'''. This could be thought of as having two degrees, one dental and one alveolar.

	Nasalization	Glot.	Fric.	Labial.	Uvuv.	Velar.	++ATT	+ATT	+RTR	Palat.
Glottalization	No
Fricitivization	No	No
Labialization a.k.a. Rounding	m	b	v
Uvularization	ɴ	ɢ	ʁ	vʶ
Pharyngealization a.k.a Velarization	ŋ	g	ɣ	w	ɣʶ
++ATT	n̪	d̪	ð	Yes	ðʶ	ɫ̪
ATT	n	d	z	Yes	zʶ	ɫ
RTR	h	ʔ	ž	Yes	ř	Yes
Palatalization	mʲ	bʲ	vʲ	Yes	ɴʲ	ŋʲ	ʎ	nʲ	hʲ
Ø	No	No	No	Yes	ʀ	ɰ	Yes	Yes	ɻ	j

"Yes" means a consonant is underspecified. Considering only RTR for a minute, here are the basic vowels (ATR on the left, RTR on the right):

	Front	Mid	Back
High	i ↔ ɪ		ʊ ↔ u
Mid	e ↔ ɛ	ə*	o ↔ ɔ
Low	æ ↔ a		ɐ ↔ ɑ

Nasalization and rounding will be considered separately. Rhotacized will be the same as "schwa-ified".
Finally, a Ph.D dissertation I found delineates articulation thusly:

1. Front
   1. Suction
   2. Continuant
   3. Strident
   4. Lateral
2. Labial
   1. Round
   2. Labial
3. Coronal
   1. Anterior
   2. Distributed
   3. Coronal
4. Dorsal
   1. High
   2. Low
   3. Back
   4. Dorsal
5. Back
   1. Nasal
   2. ATR/RTR
   3. Radical
   4. laryngeal (creaky voice)

Snake Phonotactics

In my version of Parseltongue, here are the phonotactics:

(The tap is the alveolar flap and the click is dental.  ugh.)  You can start anywhere.  There is no boundary between words.  Epenthetic 'a's will probably abound.  I need to wrap my head around 's' being the resting sound, like 'uh' in English.

Lexical Intentionality in Fluid-S Alignment

So, I'm imagining a language which uses Nominative (N), Accusative (A), Ergative (E), and Absolutive (B) cases.  The verbs do not inflect for voice, but have a lexically expected case.  For active verbs, this is either N or E.  For stative/descriptive verbs, this is either A or B.   I imagine a good N-verb might be "to eat", an A-verb "to be red", an E-verb "I punch", and a B-verb "to be reddened".  Here goes:

	Case Expected
Case Given	N	A	E	B
N	Normal Intentionality	Average Causality	Unintentionality	Unintentional Causality
A	Passive Voice	Normal Descriptive	Unintentional Passivity	Pseudo-Passive Object
E	Screaming Intentionality	Screaming Causality	Strong Intentionality	Intentional Causality
B	Intentional Passivity	Pseudo-Passive Voice	Anti-passive Voice	Normal Stative

OK, that kinda worked. Let's try it with the verbs I mentioned, imagining an Ergative-Absolutive alignment when needed:

	Case Expected
Case Given	N	A	E	B
N	I ate	I made (it) red	I punched (him) on accident	I was reddened on accident
A	I was eaten	I am red	I was punched (by him) on accident	I got reddened
E	I ate on purpose	I made (it) red on purpose	I punched (him)	I reddened (it)
B	I was eaten in purpose	I got (it) red	I was punched (by him)*	I was reddened

I have no idea if I'm murdering Fluid-S or not. I better ask some people.

English Tense-Aspect vs. Hebrew Aspect

English Tense-Aspect:

Name	Example	Past	Future	Imperf.	Perf.
Simple past	I walked.	+
Past Progressive	I was walking.	+		+
Pluperfect	I had walked.	+			+
Past perfect progressive	I had been walking.	+		+	+
Simple present	I walk.
Present progressive	I am walking.			+
Present perfect	I have walked.				+
Present perfect progressive	I have been walking.			+	+
Future	I will walk.		+
Future progressive	I will be walking.		+	+
Future perfect	I will have walked.		+		+
Future perfect progressive	I will have been walking		+	+	+

English Aspects:

• Perfective - focuses on the end
• Imperfective - focuses on the middle
• Both - from the beginning to the end

Hebrew Imperfect Aspect:

• Conative - before the beginning
• Inceptive - at and just after the beginning
• Progressive - in the middle
• Egressive - just before the end
• Resultative - before and after the end
• Gnomic - none

Hebrew Perfective Aspect:

• Ingressive - at the beginning
• Constantive - from the beginning to the end
• Constantive! - from the beginning to near the end
• Perfect - at the end
• Gnomic - none

Definition of Hebrew aspects

The imperfective aspect is a close-up o a small section of the event where the progressive action is made visible.  The perfective aspect is a view, as if from some distance, of a great part, or of the whole of the event, where the details of the progressive action are not made visible.  The imperfective aspect may include either the beginning or the end, the perfective aspect includes either the beginning and not the end, or both beginning and end.

-The Verbal System of Classical Hebrew.  An Attempt to Distinguish between Semantic and Pragmatic Factors. - Rolf Furuli, University of Oslo

Lenition and Fortition

Again, collecting the napkins and typing them up so I can throw them away:

Lenition
Remember, consonants in Perelandran are divided into the "lemon ring" (/ɫ/, /m/, /n/, /r/, and /ŋ/), "the azuře views" (/ð/, /ž/, /ɣ/, /v/, and /z/), the stops (/b/, /d/, /g/, /ʔ/, and the affricative /dž/), and the "breathing" (/j/, /w/, /ʁ/, and ◌ aka nada).

Lenition happens when you add to the end of a verb (nearly everything is a verb in Perelandran).  It's as if the words are all trying to "shorten up" in a rush to get to the end.  Lenition happens differently in the onset than it does in the coda.
Initial

• The stops all reduce to the glottal stop, except for the glottal stop itself which disappears:
• b → '
• d → '
• g → '
• j → '
• ' → ◌
• In the "lemon ring", nasal become stops and sonorants become glides:
• m → b
• n → d
• ŋ →  g (this can happen at the beginning of a word, only across syllable boundaries)
• l → y
• r → w
• "The azuře views" also become stops (well, one affricative)
• v → b
• z → d  (I'm considering adding d̪ ... not phonemicly)
• ž → dž
• ð → d
• ɣ → g

Final

• The stops cannot occur in the coda
• The fricatives/"the azuře views" universally become the glottal stop
• ð → '
• z → '
• ž → '
• v → '
• ɣ → '
• The "lemon ring" consonants all turn into fricatives:
• m → v
• n → ž
• l  → ð
• r → z
• ŋ → ɣ

Fortition

Well, about now is when I googled lenition and fortition and discovered I conceived of these backwards from everyone else.  :-(  I picture fricatives and nasal as being able to be held for a long time, versus there is no way to make a stop last longer.  For now, I'll stick with my original schema.

Again, there is a difference between onsets and coda.

Initial

• The stops become fricatives or a trill
• b → v
• d → ð
• g → ɣ
• j → ž
• ' → R
• The fricatives become sonorants
• v → m
• ð → l
• z → r
• ž → n
• ɣ → n (well, at the beginning of words.  Internally, it becomes ŋ.)
• The "lemon ring" are already at the top of their game.  If there is a consonant between them and their vowel, then they become syllabic.  Otherwise, they get growled into being their own syllable.  (It was either that or follow them with a glottal stop, which does sound nice.)
• m → Rəm:
• n → Rən:
• ŋ → Rəŋ: (this wouldn't be happening at the start of a word
• ɫ → Rəɫ:
• r → Rər:

Final

• Stops can't occur in the coda
• The fricatives are as listed above, but with out the concern over ŋ.
• For the "lemon ring", I realized I typed colons instead of ː's.  It's clear to me that Perelandran will require gemination, that is, the doubling of consonants.  I remember thinking to myself a few days ago, "Why isn't it important in English if I syllabize the participle of "run" as 'ruh-ning' vs. 'run-ning' vs. 'run-ing'?"  This will be hard for me to remember to say right, but I think I can get it.

Examples

If I have the tri-vowelic root "a-u-ai" and some imaginary verb conjugation is "m+žð+ŋ+l", then it would be realized as "maž.ðu.ˈŋaiɫ".  Some suffix (let say, "ðri") comes along, and it would become bajdugaiððri.  Or, just suppose, the prefix byo'o snuck up on us.  The root would need to beef up and the whole thing would become byo'oRəmmanɫuŋŋaiɫ.

Revising Phonology

Having listening to Conlangery #29: Sound Systems and Romanizations and #48: Designing a Sound System, I think I will revise my phonology to be more symmetrical:

	Labials		Coronals			Velar	Uvular	Glottal
	Bilabial	Lab.dent.	Dental	Alveolar	Post-Alv.
Nasal	m/מ			n/נ		ŋ/כ
Stop	b/ב		d/ד			g/ג		ʔ/ע
Affric.					dž/צ
Fricative		v/פ	ð/ת	z/ז	ž/ש	ɣ/ח
Trill				r/ר			R/ה
Lat. Approx.				ɫ/ל

j/י

w/ו

Yellow is for the "lemon ring" - למנרכ.  The velar nasal will be more limited than I previously thought.  I think it can still open a syllable, but not if any other consonants are around.  I think it can be syllabic still.

Blue is for "the azuře views" – תשחפז.  The big change is here.  The lone retroflex /ɻ/ has been replaced with /ɣ/.  I think this may get Romanized as γ (wait, that's Hellenizing) or ř.  The Hebrew ח  will help with remembering to rasp.

Grey is for the "breathings".  Like Greek -- ὀ vs. ὁ -- Perelandrans think of "smooth breathing" (i.e. nothing – א), "front breathing" (/w/ – ו), "middle breathing" (/j/ – י), and rough-low breathing (/R/ – ה).  These are spelled א and י and ו and ה respectively.
The stop (signs) are in red - בדצגע.  These are considered "weak", and are typically lenited fricatives.

Vowels don't need major revising.  I think the long vowels will all be rising and the diphthongs all falling.  I need to read a lot more, but I'm considering the much-lauded-on-Conlangery two-tone idea.  Previously, I had considered nasal vowels and I'm thinking about putting it in now.  I need to practicing saying them for a while longer.