Almean Areal Linguistics

[Almoura]

If you'll pardon my insanity...

I've been thinking about areal linguistics a fair amount recently and I have a question for Zompist: Have you thought about sprachbunds on Almea? There seem to be two salient examples in my mind: Sarnae, with the spread of VSO word order and rank based conjugation to Sarroc and Monkhayu, and the polysynthetic stew of Fananak.

I've also been reading way too much WALS recently, and I got the idea to make similar maps of Almean languages to see if i could discern any areal trends. I may make more in the future of other typological characteristics should I feel the urge (and assuming these MS Paint abominations don't inspire universal revulsion on here...). I opted to map out basic transitive word order, with a few caveats: Obviously, these 3 letter categories don't say a ton about the syntax of a language, and they're often gross oversimplifications (perhaps most notably Elkaril, which I opted to categorize as VOS). A few languages couldn't be shoehorned neatly into these categories (Old Tzuro, Kle7met', Itsenic being topic-comment, Bhogetan being...Bhogetan). I didn't find any OVS or OSV languages, possibly implying they're as rare on Almea as they are on Earth.

Taking from WALS:
Circles are SO, Diamonds OS
Blue is SOV, Red is SVO, Yellow is VSO/VOS, Gray is other
Gray outline are dead langs, black outline are living languages

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Many of the ancient languages of eastern Erelae were SOV, but it's clear that VO languages now mostly dominate the region in the present day, with the exception of Xengiman.

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Arcel as a whole is strikingly heterogenous. Here, there's mostly just one dot per language family, with the exception of Uyse7ic, which includes both Usey7 and Siadese since I could gleam word order info from both. (Eidnani-Klemet' also gets 2 dots, although the subfamilies are separated enough in both space and typology that I don't think it's a possible oversampling.) Some of the Linaminche languages have adopted SVO from Beic, but since there's no information on which ones and how many of them have made the switch, I've marked them as SOV (and put the dot in Ayalampa, as far away from the Be as possible.)

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Languages from the rest of the world I could find word order info for. Again, a diverse group, with northern Erelae being notable for its syntatic diversity in a relatively small area.

Now, for some statistics: I counted 40 languages in total, with 13 SOV (33%), 11 SVO (28%), 9 VSO (23%), 3 VOS (8%), and 4 Other (10%). 23 (58%) were VO, and 13 (33%) OV. VOS, and VSO in particular, are overrepresented compared to Earth, and SOV/SVO are underrepresented.

[bradrn]

Sarnae, with the spread of VSO word order and rank based conjugation to Sarroc and Monkhayu

I think this is explicitly intended as a Sprachbund (most notably in the rank marking, which has no equivalent on Earth or anywhere else on Almea that I’ve seen).

and the polysynthetic stew of Fananak.

‘Polysynthesis’ is, to me, rather too ill-defined to constitute a Sprachbund in and of itself. There are areas on Earth in which many languages are considered ‘polysynthetic’ but there are massive differences between them in how the polysynthesis works, for instance North America or the Arctic.

[Almoura]

‘Polysynthesis’ is, to me, rather too ill-defined to constitute a Sprachbund in and of itself. There are areas on Earth in which many languages are considered ‘polysynthetic’ but there are massive differences between them in how the polysynthesis works, for instance North America or the Arctic.

Oh, I don't disagree that polysynthesis is an ill-defined term - I just think Zompist might be using it as a shorthand for various possibly shared traits among these languages that lead to hairy sentence verbs and whatnot.

[zompist]

I've been thinking about areal linguistics a fair amount recently and I have a question for Zompist: Have you thought about sprachbunds on Almea? There seem to be two salient examples in my mind: Sarnae, with the spread of VSO word order and rank based conjugation to Sarroc and Monkhayu, and the polysynthetic stew of Fananak.

Dhekhnam certainly... I haven't documented Carhinnian, Loghdakh, or Monkhayu, but you'd see the same sort of features there. I think it's fair to call Fananak a sprachbund area too.

To some extent Eretald is also; this will be clearer once you can see Modern Kebreni.

Thanks for the maps, very interesting! Really gotta put an object-first language somewhere.

[bradrn]

Thanks for the maps, very interesting! Really gotta put an object-first language somewhere.

You can probably slip a VOS language into some area around Sarnáe. (It’s pretty common on Earth to have VOS languages in largely VSO areas. In fact it’s common for individual languages to allow both possibilities, too.)

[zompist]

Thanks for the maps, very interesting! Really gotta put an object-first language somewhere.

You can probably slip a VOS language into some area around Sarnáe. (It’s pretty common on Earth to have VOS languages in largely VSO areas. In fact it’s common for individual languages to allow both possibilities, too.)

Sure, but what Almoura noted is that I don't have OVS or OSV. I haven't verified this or checked my notes on incomplete languages. But one of the languages I've just started needs a distinctive feature...

[Almoura]

Is this implying you may be in the market for suggestions for the next language?

[zompist]

Is this implying you may be in the market for suggestions for the next language?

Do you mean, which language to work on? You can ask, but if it's not the one I have in mind you'll have to wait. (I don't mean to be mysterious, but I generally don't talk about projects till they're done or nearly done.)

(If you meant, do I need ideas?-- no... save those for your own work. )

[Almoura]

I'm placing my bets on something from Curym this time around.

[zompist]

I'm placing my bets on something from Curym this time around.

That's right! As you can guess, it's bad to have a whole continent with no worked-out languages.

[Lērisama]

As you can guess, it's bad to have a whole continent with no worked-out languages.

Does this mean we get a Palthuk language next? I've always been curious about Palthuknen¹.

¹ Although that doesn't mean I can spell it without checking