Zompist Bboard Again

I finally finished the Obenzayet grammar:

https://www.zompist.com/naviu.htm

I've been working on it (well, not continuously...) for 23 years. At least my completion rate is better than that Martin fellow.

Question: is the historical phonology on the Proto-Eastern page still up to date? (I'm wondering about the velarization changes...e.g. the PE philology page has *tuli 'breeze' -> ʔuli, but the Obenzayet page shows the (somewhat more expected?) tˠuli.

Perhaps this isn't really so much a question about Obenzayet proper, but...would you do Eastern differently if you could go back now? My impression looking at the Proto-Eastern page these days is that a lot of the changes are a little ad-hoc.

Otherwise, I like it a lot--vaguely Semitic-ish in feel, though maybe that's just the result of the Sanskrit-style vowel collapse...

I haven't updated the Eastern page (yet), and the Obenzayet page should be taken as more accurate.

As for doing things differently, sure! Though I revised both Cadinor and Verdurian extensively, I was still working backwards a lot, and that makes for some weird results. That's why I always advocate working forward from your proto-languages!

I will say that Obenzayet is about the only language that makes the proto-Eastern verbal system work. (Though if I could start over, I'd try to use more than just suffixes for verb forms. Maybe some reduplication, or Sanskrit-style single-consonant morphemes.)

Excellent news! I remember looking through the navbar and wondering when Naviu and Čia-Šia would come… I guess I know the answer now!

As usual for me, here’s some questions and comments:

• What exactly makes you say that Obenzayet ‘makes the proto-Eastern verbal system work’?
• I really like the velarised consonants! But do you think you could change their IPA transcription to the less ambiguous /pˠ bˠ tˠ dˠ cˠ ɟˠ ɫ/? (I interpret tilde as representing nasalisation, and it is defined as such in the IPA.)
• In the same section, you say that /ɫ/ is ‘very much like the English dark l in full, only with the tongue even farther back in the mouth’. But English ‘dark l’ is just /ɫ/… why the extra instruction to pull the tongue back? Unless the Obenzayet sound is actually [ɭˠ] or something, but you never explicitly say that. (Also, this sentence would make an excellent example of the pitfalls of explaining sounds with reference to English: I have [fʊw] rather than [fʊɫ] for full.)
• Would it be possible to have the PE→Obenzayet sound changes, as for the other Eastern languages?
• In the ‘Morphology’ section, you say ‘irregularities are highlighted in blue’, but I can’t see any highlights anywhere. (Maybe it’s because I’m colourblind? But usually I see blue fine.)
• You say ‘Nouns precede adjectives, genitives, numbers, demonstratives, and relative clauses’ — but what is the word order amongst those? (Unless you were implying the word order to be ‘N Adj Gen Num Dem Rel’, in which case I think you should clarify this explicitly.)

To handle the easy bits for now:

* I like the vowel changes for tense in Obenzayet. It's messed up by sound change everywhere else.
* The PE > Obenzayet sound changes are already listed on the Proto-Eastern page.

I didn't do the color highlighting... I'll add that.

I find it amusing you sometimes post things that have been years in on-and-off preparation, probably a decade or more. But then again, when you have a 40+ year-old conworld...

In my transliteration I don't use the IPA symbols p̃ b̃ etc., but the simpler p̄ ṯ ḵ ḇ ḏ ḡ.

Those are not IPA symbols...

Adjacent to a velar or velarized consonant it fricativizes; thus ksut̃ = [kʃut̃].

I wonder, is this a left-over from an earlier version with č? [s] is already a fricative, but maybe there was [tʃ ~ ʃ] allophony involved here before, which would explain this use of "fricativizes" (as opposed to "is retracted/palatalized").

The stress rules:

Stress the last vowel of the root.
sin-ä, ait-a, gäla-ra, läl-aɫi, mirast-az
But for verbs with an infix (e.g. the past conditional), stress the infix.
läl-iz-aɫi, läl-and-amu
And if the ending starts with a long vowel, stress it.
läl-ätu, läl-and-ätu

As shown, try to make syllables end in a vowel.

It would be helpful for readers to indicate stress in those examples (sin-ä, läl-iz-aɫi, läl-ätu). I mean, as it is it's understandable, but it'd be nicely helpful. Is "try to make syllables end in a vowel" a left-over note for yourself for designing the vocab later, to remember most suffixes should ideally end in a vowel?

Thanks, Mark! This is a great Christmas surprise. (Like others, I first started anticipating this page nearly twentyyearsago (!!)…)

Is it possible that Cuezi Arrasos is related to arats? A shared ancient loan from the Meťelyi?

Good stuff! Now that we have a good idea of what the Naviu branch is like, we are waiting for a Čia-Ša grammar

Updated the grammar.

1. I used pˠ etc. in the phonology section. The tilde is used for velarization, but it should overlay the character: p̴. This tends to look terrible, however.
2. The stress section now correctly indicates the stressed syllable. This should make sense of the comment about ending syllables in a vowel.
3. I put in the colors that were in my Word document.
4. Some minor typos are fixed.

Thanks to everyone for pointing out problems. Also, special thanks to vegfarandi for telling me about the option to embed fonts, which allowed me to use the Verdurian script extensively.

Ketsuban wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:45 am Is it possible that Cuezi Arrasos is related to arats? A shared ancient loan from the Meťelyi?

That's pretty clever! I'll have to mention that in the Cuêzi lexicon.

Great Christmas present, Zompist!

<Dad Joke Mode>
But what about the Untenzayet language?
</Dad Joke Mode>

Nevermind - anyway, thank you for all your great work!

Speaking of that Martin fellow, is mäɣi a small homage?

So Haleza Grise wrote: ↑Sat Dec 26, 2020 2:56 pm Speaking of that Martin fellow, is mäɣi a small homage?

Yes, though inadvertently. Since I needed more words, I mined my submission for the LCS contest for creating Dothraki, years ago, to get some use out of it. I thought I'd skipped any actual Martin words, but missed that one. (Looks like he lifted it from Persian, anyway!)

Random typo: in the introduction you've got vrazikaiz for ancestor, but everywhere else it's vraskaiz.

And about half the time when you were trying to say declension you actually wrote declination.

Both things fixed; thanks!

Always great to see new grammars for Almea!

I noticed that in the Proto-Eastern grammar the word for land; xūn-s, listed in the masculine verb table, is realised as ʔün-z in the Obenzayat column, but is ḵün-z in the equivalent table on the Naviu page. Does that represent an early draft of Obenzayat, or an alternative such as Proto-Naviu or another language?