Pabappa wrote: ↑Fri May 17, 2019 1:29 pm
Very good reading as always, thank you. I have a few questions, I hope not too many.
Many thanks, and no trouble at all!
Is your ł a convenience symbol for IPA /ɫ/, /ɬ/, or something else?
Right, forgot about that...it was supposed to be /ɬ/; on the original files (Microsoft Word) I didn't have access to IPA symbols, and forgot to change it when I switched over to a different format. Thanks for reminding me! All corrected!
Are the long vowels /ii/ and /uu/ simply pronounced long, or is there a glide? Can there be a contrast between /ii/ and /ji/? How about /jii/? Same question with /ia ua/, I guess .... are those phonetically [ja wa]? Im guessing not, because i see sequences of /j/ + vowel and also /i/ + vowel below ... but i want to be sure. Plus, I guess there's those palatalized alveolars ... can something like /sʲii/ contrast with /sii/ and /sji/?
/ii/ and /uu/ technically use glides, but they're treated as two individual moras for the most part (as in /u-u/). You
could get /ji/, and potentially /jii/, but the latter is rare due to phonetic restrictions. For that matter, combinations of a long vowel with a short, or of two long vowels, usually has one of the vowels turning into a full semivowel. In the combination /uu/+/ia/, for example, the spoken form (as best as can be reconstructed) would be /uuja/; /ii/+/ia/ would be /ijia/, not /iija/; and /au/+/ja/ would still be /auja/ not **/avia/ or */avja/.
How many gods are there? Do they take human form? Are they bound to a specific gender? If so, how many are male and female? Can they age?
There are technically as many gods around in Ajjamah as there need to be; they are primordial souls (as in literally the souls of extinct animals) clinging on to some semblance of life in the Dream (one side of the Spirit World), where perception of reality is stored. (It's been
really messy since humans showed up.) They enter symbiotic relationships with living beings of sufficient mental development; if one gives them enough of a shape, the god will step into it and begin acting as commanded, and in return grant certain powers to their believers. The Salvians, and the Crusaders down in Hercua, have made this into an art form--but more on them later. They take, accordingly, whatever forms are allowed to them by the belief system. If they're always human, then they're always human. If they're made to identify as male or female, then
regardless of the animal's original sex they will be male or female. (Note that often several souls from different animals will fuse together in one deity of sufficient power, so there may be both male
and female aspects.)
How much power do they actually wield? Well, it depends on the landscape. You can have several hundred or several thousand deities with minimal power across an area, or you can have them combine into larger beings (again, through people believing that they are but one deity, or servants thereof). Too much power to the gods also has a tendency to diminish one's own Gift, a supernatural power imprinted on the soul that differs between ethnicities. The Salvians to the south get around this by fusing their Speaking Soul with a deity quite early on, limiting their connection with other gods in exchange for keeping their own powers. The Icemannic peoples, with a similar power (detaching their Speaking Soul from their body), instead prefer to speak to deities personally in the Dream, which is
not the same as prayer (because they're interacting with the essence of the god directly and not altering it to be programmed to do what they want).
The
aging of gods is a fascinating topic on its own. It's not really that the god gets older (although they do) or more or less powerful (although they do); it's that the god becomes more
mature. After a few centuries of existence a god has a basic "template" set out for itself, and wayward spirits joining the cluster have to change quite drastically to fit the mould. This is okay, though, because the god no longer has to worry as much about being ripped apart by thaumic winds in the Dream--it develops a shell made of memories, so to speak. As attitudes to the god change in the future, the effect is additive instead; there's a core personality, to which later experiences add and cause self-reflection in the god. A sufficiently ancient deity has a personality as complex as an adult human being, and (if their faith has kept up) much, much more power.
More on the deities of the Icemannic peoples, including their totems, personalities, and cults, later. Maybe even next post if you like.
Are the gaps in the paradigm intentional?
Not at all; these were simply the order in which I needed them for sentences. I'll finish it up soon, no worries.
That word's got a nice rhythm to it. But I dont understand the gloss .... you have seven morphemes spelled out, but only five in the gloss. Also, what happens to the medial /ja/?
Hah, another mistake! Gods was I out of it yesterday (had my wisdom teeth out)...corrections made.
Lastly, I want to hear about the causative noun case. Would the causative be used for sentences like, "Because of the storm, I slept all day."? How would you translate a clause like "Because I'm a boy", or "Because of my son"?
Quite right! Strictly speaking the causative, like the durative and interpersonal, is one of those cases that works better with "verbs" than "nouns" in Proto-Icemannic, being used almost entirely to create subordinate conjunctions. For copula sentences it's preferred to use the conjectural suffix alone (for example *
ɣaatsuqava VERB+
vau "I am a boy therefore VERB"), while for nouns that require additional explanation (an action that is not instinctual to them) the causative is combined with the conjectural, the causative appearing as always before the possessive pronoun (*
katavaujuk VERB-
vau "Because of my son therefore VERB"). For the type of clause you first suggested, that has a noun with an instinctually understandable action (a storm "storms" no matter what), one would combine the causative and conjectural with the conjunction *
iŋu. (Incidentally, your sentence would be *
visjəvun puandulavauva (iŋu) tsaanduʁukiaqatsut "I assume that because of the storm I slept, and (as a linked action while I was sleeping) an entire day passed.")
Thanks for your time.
Thank you for yours!