Writing about proto-languages: past or present tense?

[dɮ the phoneme]

Here's a dilemma I've always faced as a conlanger: when describing my languages, what tense do I write in? For natural languages, the convention seems to be to write in the present tense when describing either a currently spoken language, or any language in which there is some extant body of text, even if it is no longer spoken natively. Reconstructed proto-languages, as far as I've seen, are usually described in the past tense. When it comes to conlanging though, this convention is sometimes a bit problematic to me.

For one thing, my conworld doesn't have any particular time designated as "the present". I have a rough chronology of events, and when different languages are spoken in relation to each other, etc., but it doesn't fully make sense to talk about any of them as being in the "past" or "future". In addition, none of my conlangs are linguistic reconstructions, obviously. Even in-universe, my "proto-languages" are just the common ancestor of a given family, not reconstructions thereof. So, I'm left a bit stumped. As a result I usually just write in the present tense for everything, since I figure languages are timeless entities or something like that. But I'm curious, what do others on this board do?

[bradrn]

I’m currently making a proto-language, and it looks like I’ve described it in the present tense. But I must say that I’ve never really paid attention to the tense I use for my reference grammars.

[zompist]

I actually had to check this, but I write about ancient languages using the present tense. After all, languages are timeless. We say that Sanskrit has 8 tenses-- it would be a little weird to say it had 8, since that implies it's lost a few since.

On the other hand, I write about the speakers using the past tense for languages before the Almean present. Usually that doesn't impact the grammar itself, but I usually have a contextual or historical introduction.

[Darren]

I've experienced this too; generally I start writing in the present, then switch to past part-way through. I can also never decide how much I want to "reconstruct" or at least write about in grammars; I feel that because it's being presented as if it was a reconstructed proto-language I should leave out the details which wouldn't be reconstructable, but I also want to make those details because they're interesting and would influence the descendants. The underlying problem is probably that I want to make a polished grammar right away rather than actually making the language first, so I want to put everything in the grammar.

[Pabappa]

I write in the past tense for languages that take place in the past (all but two of them) and in the present tense for those other two (Poswa and Pabappa). I tend to slip up a lot, though, and i think i privately prefer the present tense style.

[bradrn]

I've experienced this too; generally I start writing in the present, then switch to past part-way through. I can also never decide how much I want to "reconstruct" or at least write about in grammars; I feel that because it's being presented as if it was a reconstructed proto-language I should leave out the details which wouldn't be reconstructable, but I also want to make those details because they're interesting and would influence the descendants. The underlying problem is probably that I want to make a polished grammar right away rather than actually making the language first, so I want to put everything in the grammar.

Suggestion: maybe create a reference grammar for your own use, then write a new grammar as if it were reconstructed from its descendants. (I suppose this is similar to what zompist did with Caďinor: write a reference grammar, and then rewrite it in a completely different style.) I don’t have any languages yet in a presentable state, but I am working on a reference grammar for a proto-language, and I intend to do this if I ever get around to deriving some daughter languages and I decide to present the proto-language.

(This approach also lets you artificially introduce realistic amounts of uncertainty into your ‘reconstructions’. So e.g. if you have a phoneme /x/ which turns into /w/, /f/, /v/, /h/ in various descendants, this would let you say something like ‘the exact realisation of phoneme *H in the protolanguage is a controversial; here we have reconstructed it as */f/’.)

[dewrad]

When writing about languages which are intratextually no longer spoken, I use the present tense to describe the proto-language and its modern descendants and the past to describe its speakers, much like Zompist. So, for example:

The Arrhosic languages form a macrofamily of languages spoken across much of northern Esseila and north-west Ixqipo. Their common ancestor, Proto-Arrhosic, is reconstructed as having been spoken in the subarctic steppe of Esseila approximately 14 millennia before present. Proto-Arrhosic is particularly notable for exhibiting the "intransitival" morphosyntactic alignment.

Having said that, when I create a proto-language, I'm generally 50-50 on whether I want to publish it at all. There's a temptation to keep it unpublished, so as not to focus on the bones of the broth, as it were.

[bradrn]

The Arrhosic languages form a macrofamily of languages spoken across much of northern Esseila and north-west Ixqipo. Their common ancestor, Proto-Arrhosic, is reconstructed as having been spoken in the subarctic steppe of Esseila approximately 14 millennia before present. Proto-Arrhosic is particularly notable for exhibiting the "intransitival" morphosyntactic alignment.

I know this is getting really off-topic, but I have a couple of questions about this:

1. How is ‘Ixqipo’ pronounced? (I’m guessing something like /iʃt͡ʃipo/, but I’m probably wrong.)
2. I’ve heard of many different morphosyntactic alignments, but never ‘intransitival’. What is that?

(I’d be fine with moving this discussion into the Conlang Random Thread or some other more appropriate place if this thread isn’t the right place to discuss this.)

EDIT: I just found an answer for my first question in this post — it’s /iʃˈkʷipɔ/.

[Richard W]

We say that Sanskrit has 8 tenses-- it would be a little weird to say it had 8, since that implies it's lost a few since.

Though, semantically, that's actually a reasonable way of looking at things!

[Pedant]

I have a general rule. If I feel like the proto-culture was advanced enough to leave some record of the language behind, then it has continuity to the present day and thus can use the present tense. If the language is hidden, or hypothetical, I use the past tense. Simple and relatively straightforward, I hope.

[dewrad]

The Arrhosic languages form a macrofamily of languages spoken across much of northern Esseila and north-west Ixqipo. Their common ancestor, Proto-Arrhosic, is reconstructed as having been spoken in the subarctic steppe of Esseila approximately 14 millennia before present. Proto-Arrhosic is particularly notable for exhibiting the "intransitival" morphosyntactic alignment.

I know this is getting really off-topic, but I have a couple of questions about this:

1. How is ‘Ixqipo’ pronounced? (I’m guessing something like /iʃt͡ʃipo/, but I’m probably wrong.)
2. I’ve heard of many different morphosyntactic alignments, but never ‘intransitival’. What is that?

(I’d be fine with moving this discussion into the Conlang Random Thread or some other more appropriate place if this thread isn’t the right place to discuss this.)

EDIT: I just found an answer for my first question in this post — it’s /iʃˈkʷipɔ/.

"Intransitival" is what I've been calling this.

[bradrn]

The Arrhosic languages form a macrofamily of languages spoken across much of northern Esseila and north-west Ixqipo. Their common ancestor, Proto-Arrhosic, is reconstructed as having been spoken in the subarctic steppe of Esseila approximately 14 millennia before present. Proto-Arrhosic is particularly notable for exhibiting the "intransitival" morphosyntactic alignment.

I know this is getting really off-topic, but I have a couple of questions about this:

1. How is ‘Ixqipo’ pronounced? (I’m guessing something like /iʃt͡ʃipo/, but I’m probably wrong.)
2. I’ve heard of many different morphosyntactic alignments, but never ‘intransitival’. What is that?

(I’d be fine with moving this discussion into the Conlang Random Thread or some other more appropriate place if this thread isn’t the right place to discuss this.)

EDIT: I just found an answer for my first question in this post — it’s /iʃˈkʷipɔ/.

"Intransitival" is what I've been calling this.

Oh, that! I forgot you were the author (for lack of a better word) of that thread. ‘Intransitival’ is certainly a good word for that alignment.