Author: Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Sound Changes, Part 3: Lenition and Epenthesis

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

In High Kyol, while there’s root-pattern morphology, it’s not particularly complicated yet. Given the massive vowel deletion that’s happened, there’s generally going to be one or fewer vowels within the root stem. In New Kyol, the descendant language, the complex consonant clusters in High Kyol will be broken up. 

Syllabic Consonant Lenition

The first thing that’s going to go is the syllabic consonants. These will soften into new vowels! Syllabic /ʎ/, and /ʝ/ will become /i/. Syllabic /ɣ/ will probably become /ɯ/ (the closest vowel). We can say that some other consonants also become /ɯ/: /l/, which has a tendency to become back vowels, and /m/, which has a tendency to become close vowels. Other syllabic consonants, /ŋ/, /n/ and /r/, will probably become /ə/.

In summary:

  • {ʎ,ʝ} [+syllabic] → i
  • {ɣ,l,m} [+syllabic] → ɯ
  • {ŋ,n,r} [+syllabic] → ə

This produces an interesting consequence: Last post, we discussed how a combination of metathesis and vowel assimilation can replace a vowel in a word with /ɣ/. That /ɣ/ will turn into /u/, producing a new potential form. Applied to our root, this gives us ksut as a form, alongside forms like ksatga and kəstarga.

Epenthesis

After syllabic consonant lenition, some of the complicated word-initial and word-final clusters can get broken up. Complex word-initial clusters are broken up with a copy vowel. (That is, the vowel of the tonic syllable is copied in the pretonic syllable.)

  • ‘ksagt → ka.’sagt

Notably, this will also affect our new u-form:

  • ‘ksut → ku.’sut

Sometimes forms that would normally be affected by this change are modified by a prefix that makes them unaffected.

  • shə-.‘ksagt → shə-.’ksagt (no change)

Complex coda clusters will get broken up with ə. This will transform the -g- infix created by metathesis into something more substantial.

  • ka.’sagt → ka.’sag.’ət.

A -gə- infix is thus produced.

Conclusion

Let’s take a look at the final root forms produced by these sound changes:

kosatga → ksagt → kasagət

shokosatga → shəksagt → shəksagət

kosatagra → kəstagr → kəstagə

kosatghi → ksght → kusut

ankosat → anksat → ankəsat

For fun, let’s also apply them to another made-up root with different vowel layout: tikoz.

tikozga → tkogz → tokogəz

shotikozga → shətkozg → shətkogəz

tikozagra → təkzagr → təkzagə

tikozghi → tkghz→ tukuz

antikoz → antkoz→ antəkoz

This can be generalized into some root-pattern forms. (The symbol @ will be used here for thematic vowels.)

1@2@gə3, shə12@gə3, 1ə23agə, 1u2u3, an1ə2@3

With that, we’re done with the sound changes for High and New Kyol! (For now – I may revisit them at some point.) I’ll probably post a list of all the sound changes without my thought process so you can see everything chronologically. After that, it’s time for brainstorming some grammar!

Sound Changes Part 2: Ablaut, Metathesis, and Vowel Loss

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

The last post in this series was about the role that stress-based sound changes play in the development of this language’s triconsonantal roots. This one is about everything else. Or at least, the remaining major1I say major because I may make some other sound changes when it seems either necessary or interesting. But these are the ones that are going to most radically alter phonology, phonotactics and root structure. sound changes between Old Kyol and High Kyol. 

Ablaut

Ablaut is the simplest of the sound changes I’m discussing today. i pulls preceding vowels /a/ and /o/ to /ə/. This happened before the stress shift, so in some contexts i-ablaut will occur in the descendant language without an i triggering it – contributing even more to root-and-pattern morphology. 

Metathesis

Metathesis is the switching of two consonants within a word to make it easier to pronounce. It’s found most commonly in isolated cases, like english “cavalry” being pronounced “calvary”. But it can occur in grammatical patterns, especially derived stem forms in Semitic languages. In reflexive stems, such as the Hebrew hitpael form and Arabic form VIII, a /t/ in the prefix switches place with the first consonant of the root:

  • Hitpael: šdl = hištaddēl (he made an effort)
  • Arabic form VIIII: ktb = iktataba (he copied)

(Both examples, sadly, are from Wikipedia – I’m pretty swamped right now and didn’t have time to dig around for a linguistics textbook.)

Metathesis is fairly complicated to evolve. Among linguists there seems to be some debate about how to classify and understand metathesis, the nature of which I am unable to comprehend. That being said, there are some useful trends: Voiceless stops prefer being in onset positions, while continuants (fricatives & liquids) prefer to be in coda positions. Coronal2pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the mouth, teeth or lips. consonants prefer to go after non-coronal consonants.3 https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~gene/papers/Buckley2011_metathesis.pdf

Let’s apply some of these trends here:

  • /t/ switches place with following sibilant fricatives.
  • /k/, /g/, /x/ and /ɣ/ switch places with preceding alveolar consonants.
  • /ɣ/ and /ʝ/ switch places with preceding stops.

So that we don’t have some extreme weirdness going on, I’m going to place this before the stress-based vowel deletion. This will prevent the most confusing of the effects, where consonants within a triliteral root would regularly switch places -effectively destroying the triliteral root system. However, it does mean that some affixes will end up inside the root:

  • ko.’sat.ga → ko.sag.ta → ksag.ta → ksagt

Syllabic Consonants

With the deletion of vowels, we probably already have some syllabic consonants being created. Take an example root r-t-n, proto *rotan. With the -ga suffix, this becomes:

 ra.tan.ga → r.’tan.ga → r.’tang

 It’s probably more reasonable to evaluate the /r/ as its own syllable, rather than trying to cram /rt/ into an onset.

But this isn’t enough syllabic consonants to satisfy my sadistic cravings. If nothing else, it means syllabic consonants will never occur in stressed positions. I simply cannot abide this level of pronounceability!

The process of getting more syllabic consonants is fairly simple. We often consider consonants assimilating into neighbouring vowels, but rarely vowels assimilating into neighbouring consonants. In Mandarin Chinese (and some other Sino-Tibetan languages), some fricatives near a high vowel will assimilate into that vowel, producing “apical vowels” – essentially syllabic voiced fricatives. There are two voiced fricatives, /ʝ/ and /ɣ/, which are already very close to our high vowel /i/. /ʎ/, being a palatal liquid, is also close enough to /i/ to assimilate it. While /ŋ/ at first seems unusual to assimilate an /i/, it’s pronounced as  [ɲ] close to high vowels, and so could also assimilate previous /i/.4 Technically, this would create a division between syllabic ŋ (from əŋ) and ɲ (from iŋ). But these two sounds are so close I think that they’ll just recombine into syllabic ŋ If these consonants are in coda position of a syllable after an /i/, they’ll assimilate the /i/ and become syllabic.

In addition, there’s the vowel /ə/. This vowel is very weak. As such, it’ll assimilate into coda liquids. This includes all the consonants which assimilate /i/, as well as /r/, /l/, /m/, and /n/.

In summary:

  • i → ∅ / _ ʝ,ɣ,ʎ,ŋ $
  • ə → ∅ / _ ʝ,ɣ,r,l,ʎ,m,n,ŋ $

Now something fun happens here. Let’s create the suffix -ɣi, and apply it to our example root *kosag. First, we have umlaut take effect:

  • ko.’sat.ɣi → ko.’sət.ɣi

Next, we have metathesis:

  • ko.’sət.ɣi → ko.’səɣ.ti

Then, vowel deletion takes place:

  • ko.’səɣ.ti → ‘ksəɣt

Finally, the /ɣ/ assimilates the preceding /ə/, giving us

  • ‘ksəɣt → ‘ksɣt

Not only does this wonderful word have no vowels whatsoever, but it also just inserted a consonant in the middle of the stem!

Conclusion

But this isn’t the end of the language’s lineage, and the root-and-pattern morphology will develop in its descendant languages. Next time I’ll discuss the sound changes in the daughter language, with a particular eye to the reduction of the consonant clusters created in today’s changes.

  • 1
    I say major because I may make some other sound changes when it seems either necessary or interesting. But these are the ones that are going to most radically alter phonology, phonotactics and root structure.
  • 2
    pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the mouth, teeth or lips.
  • 3
    https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~gene/papers/Buckley2011_metathesis.pdf
  • 4
    Technically, this would create a division between syllabic ŋ (from əŋ) and ɲ (from iŋ). But these two sounds are so close I think that they’ll just recombine into syllabic ŋ

Sound Changes, Part 1: Stress

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Today I’m going to be tackling prosodic sound changes in this conlang. (That is, sound changes based on stress.)

These sound changes are going to be important. So determining the stress system is going to be very important. Stress in the protolanguage always falls on the last closed syllable that isn’t the final syllable. (Closed syllables are syllables that end in consonants.) In words with no closed syllables, stress falls on the antepenultimate syllable.

Notably, this allows us to manipulate stress with affixes. Let’s make an example root, *kosat.

In base unmodified form, it has stress on the first syllable:

  • ˈko.sat

Add a simple affix like -a, it still has stress on the first syllable:

  • ˈko.sa.ta

But add a suffix like -ga, and the second syllable becomes closed, and the stress shifts:

  • ko.ˈsat.ga

We can even shift the stress off the stem entirely, with an affix like -agra:

  • ko.sa.ˈtag.ra

Using a prefix like an-, we can also shift the stress before the stem.

  • ˈan.ko.sat

While I’m not committed to any of these affixes yet (and currently they don’t have any meaning), they cover most of the possible stress shifts that can happen to a verb in this language. I’m going to use these four examples to demonstrate our stress shifts.

Let’s look at the stress-based sound changes I’ve got from the protolanguage to Old Kyol.

Firstly, pretonic vowels are lost. (That is, the vowel directly before the stressed syllable.)

  • ko.ˈsat.ga → ˈksat.ga
  • ko.sa.ˈtag.ra → kos.ˈtag.ra

The new pretonic vowels then go to /ə/.

  • kos.’tag.ra → kəs.’tag.ra

Then, posttonic vowels are lost. (The vowels directly after the stressed syllable.)

  • ˈko.sa.ta → ˈkos.ta
  • ko.ˈsat.ga → ˈksatg
  • kos.ˈtag.ra → kəs.ˈtag.r
  • ˈan.ko.sat → ˈan.ksat

That gives our final four forms:

ˈkos.ta, ˈksatg, kəs.ˈtag.r, ˈan.ksat

Something notable emerges here. Our old stem had a vowel pattern of CoCaC. But looking at the last three forms, we can’t tell that the first vowel was o. If the first vowel was a or i in the protolanguage, it would produce the same forms.

This is actually really good. If you had to know all three consonants and both vowels of the original root, it wouldn’t really be triconsonantal – you’d still have to know that the old root was *kodag. But if you don’t have to know that first vowel, the root can be reanalyzed as k-d-g with a thematic vowel a. Now, we could still analyze this as a root form ksat with a bunch of vowel changes, like some analyses of the Berber languages. But later changes will make it more difficult to analyze it this way. 

Of course, we still have that first form sticking around, but it’s honestly fairly easy to have all the affixes you can apply to the verb shift the stress away from the first syllable. Perhaps a couple forms still preserve the “o” of the old stem. If so, they’re treated as irregular.

With the stress-based changes done, next time I’ll fill out the rest of the changes from Old Kyol to High Kyol that encourage the triconsonantal root structure.

Flora of Kyol: Characteristic Trees

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

While it was tempting to start with the most unusual and unique plant species in the ecosystems (or to immediately jump into designing weird fungi), I’m starting with some tree species. The trees I’m designing today are going to be some of the most common in their respective ecosystems. Much like in the tropical dipterocarp forests of Southeast Asia or continental pine barrens of the US, these trees will be a major part of how the ecosystem is defined.

Today, I’ll be discussing the Darkwoods of the seasonal swamps, and the Torsitas of the dry regions.

The Floodplain – Darkwoods

The forested floodplains of the Kyol area are defined by the genus commonly known as Darkwood trees. These trees are highly adapted for seasonal flooding. Stabilizing roots help keep them anchored in muddy soil. The small, hard fruits are designed to be distributed by water, containing high concentrations of tannins to discourage fish from eating them.

The wood of these trees is culturally important for its use as a building material. It’s extremely resistant to mold and waterlogging. As the common name suggests, the wood of these trees tends to be very dark, ranging between species from a wenge-like1The wood of Millettia laurentii gray-brown to an ebony-like black.2It’s easily distinguishable from ebony by lacking ebony’s characteristic hardness and shine, with a surface much more like a standard hardwood. These colors are part of what gives Kyol vernacular architecture (which is typically fairly light on paint) its distinctive look.

High Ground – Torsitas

While the lower regions are dominated by Darkwood trees, the higher ground, with fewer environmental threats, is more diverse. However, there are still some trees that define this ecosystem – specifically, the genus Torsita.

The trees are named for their distinctive multi-trunked body plan.3That is, they have low apical dominance. One common species is Torsita alba – also known as white torsita (for the color of its bark). They’re some of the largest trees in the forest, typically growing around 30 ft in height. The leaves are purplish-green, with the purple tint coming from anthocyanins which discourage predation by insects. They also occasionally undergo cladoptosis, shedding infected limbs that are unneeded.

Torsita alba flowers during the spring, producing purple bell-shaped flowers. The fruits reach maturity in late summer. They’re structured similarly to rosehips, with a fleshy accessory fruit surrounding a cluster of achenes (dry fruit.) The fruit is primarily eaten by a species of omnivorous bat, and as such grow mostly out of reach of ground-dwelling animals. (Because of their small size, the difficulty of harvesting them, and their watery flavor and slimy texture, they aren’t an important part of local cuisine.)

So those are the characteristic trees of the forest ecosystems of Kyol! Well, some of them, at least. While the darkwood swamps and torsita forests are the largest forest ecosystems in the area, they aren’t the only ones. Next time, I’ll be covering the trees characteristic of some of Kyol’s more unusual habitats.

  • 1
  • 2
    It’s easily distinguishable from ebony by lacking ebony’s characteristic hardness and shine, with a surface much more like a standard hardwood.
  • 3
    That is, they have low apical dominance.

Language Goals (The Kyol Language Family, Part 2)

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

After I finished discussing the broad idea of triconsonantal roots in the last post, I wanted to show how I’m going to start constructing them in my conlang. But as I tried, it became clear that, even with the background of my last post, a lot of my motivations for what I’m doing with this language are still pretty unclear. So let’s establish some goals. 

For me, the primary goals are features I know I want to have in my language. These are: Semitic-style root and pattern morphology, grammatical gender, grammatical honorific speech, and complex consonant clusters. Let’s examine each of these in more detail:

Semitic-style root and pattern morphology. Given the subject of my last post, this one shouldn’t be much of a surprise. I think they’re cool and can work with some of my other ideas.

Grammatical gender. This comes less from my ideas about the language itself and more from my ideas about Kyol culture. Kyol society is heavily based around gender roles. In particular, it’s matriarchal both in organization and in worldview, to a degree not seen in any human culture on Earth. (I’ll discuss this in its own post later.) Grammatical feminine-masculine-neuter distinctions seem like a good way to show this in the language.

Honorific speech. Again, this idea comes mostly from my ideas about Kyol culture. Not only does Kyol culture place emphasis on hierarchy, but it also highly values propriety and politeness. While all languages have registers of some kind, I want this language to have a more complex and grammatical register system like Korean. 

Complex consonant clusters. I want the phonotactics to be really loose, with lots of syllable-initial and syllable-final clusters, as well as a lot of syllabic consonants. In addition to the obvious syllabic sonorants1Nasals, laterals, and the trilled [r̩] – which I was worried about being unnaturalistic except it occurs in a bunch of Slavic languages., there’s also syllabic voiced fricatives. 

I’ve learned in my early drafts that a language isn’t as interesting as a root-pattern language when most of the vowels are gone entirely. However, it does make a really good middle stage for a language developing triconsonantal roots. I’m currently labeling this stage ‘Old Kyol’, as I think it’s a good language for the ancient Kyol Allegiance. Then, various forms of epenthesis (inserting vowels to make the word easier to pronounce) will come in, making more obvious root pattern morphology.

In addition to these basic goals, there are two considerations that I want to keep in mind when making this language. These aren’t exactly goals, but more guidelines that I want to be working within.

Not too similar to a Semitic language. Triconsonantal roots already are very indicative of a Semitic language, and I’m already straying into this territory with some of my other goals. On the phonology side, clusters and a lot of dorsal fricatives already give the language a kind of Arabic-like sound. On the grammar side, I know I want verb agreement (that only references the subject), agreement with regards to gender, and a derived stem system like Semitic languages. Thus I want to make other parts of the language different from Semitic languages where possible. But I don’t want to be adding features that feel like they’re layered on for no reason, so I’m going to have to be careful with what I’m doing in the future. I’ll revisit this idea when we get to some of the grammatical ideas.

“Snarl-like” phonaesthetic. See the consonant clusters, and also a dorsal-heavy phonology. Normally I try to make my phonaesthetics more distinctive than this one. This phonaesthetic is a common signifier for a “warlike” or “savage” culture. See Orcish, or Lovecraft’s weird chant-language. This isn’t only racist if you do it wrong but also not particularly interesting. It’s a very cliche way of showing certain societal traits.

The reason why I like it here is that Kyol culture is an exact opposite of these stereotypes. Kyol culture places great emphasis on propriety and respectability. Violence is taboo to even discuss, and overt aggression is frowned upon. Like a lot of Kyol culture, the symbolism here is running a bit counter to the cultural traits it’s expressing, but I think it’s an interesting challenge to reconcile the contrast in the reader’s mind.

For Kyol, a large part of this will come from the Kyolite operatic and literary traditions. Despite what I post about on my blog, I am actually mostly a composer and not a linguist or anthropologist. So I’d like to write some vocal music in this language! And I don’t want it to all sound like war songs – I want to attempt to write genuinely lyrical and beautiful music in this language. The weirdness of the phonaesthetic provides both a unique challenge and a unique sound that I’m looking forward to getting to work with.

So, with my goals set and some guidelines established, I’m going to start getting into the conlanging itself!

  • 1
    Nasals, laterals, and the trilled [r̩] – which I was worried about being unnaturalistic except it occurs in a bunch of Slavic languages.

Evolving Triconsonantal Roots

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Let’s talk about triconsonantal roots.

In the real world, triconsonantal root systems are very unusual – being exclusive to languages in the Semitic language family (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.) However, they’re also in my conlang. So let’s discuss them and how they arise!

What are triconsonantal roots?

In most languages, words have stems – a string of sounds which carry the word’s lexical meaning. This word’s meaning can be changed by adding prefixes and suffixes to the stem.

Example (English): happy, happier, happiest

Word stem: happy

Affixes: -∅, -er, -est

Occasionally, the sounds within a stem can be altered to convey meaning (a process known as apophony).

drink, drank, drunk

In languages with triconsonantal roots, however, instead of analyzing most words as stems and affixes, we can analyze them as roots and patterns.1If you know about Semitic languages and are wondering “but what about derived stems?” I’ll get to them another time. The language that I’m working on has a derived stem system, and I’ll go into more detail on that then. Roots are unpronounceable strings – generally of three consonants (hence “triconsonantal”). To inflect them, you put patterns of vowels (and sometimes other consonants) between the roots.

Example (Arabic): kataba, yaktubu

Root: K-T-B

Patterns: 1 a 2 a 3 a, ya 1 2 u 3 u

But this distinction isn’t as split as you might think. In The Origin and Development of Nonconcatenative Morphology2This work is the primary source I’m using here, and one that I’ll frequently use throughout this work. While others have previously come to the conclusion that triconsonantal root systems are simply extended forms of apophony, Simpson’s is one of the most commonly called upon that I’ve seen – probably because it goes into such depth., Andrew Kingsbury Simpson argues that Semitic triconsonantal root systems arise from extremely extended forms of apophony. In other words, the vowel patterns derived from triconsonantal roots have their origins in prefixes and suffixes that have been affected by sound changes. Simpson finds two types of change are at play here – segmentally and prosodically conditioned alternations.

Let’s make up an example verb to see how this works. (I’m not using one from my language, or from a real-world language, as I want some fairly streamlined sound changes to show how this works.)

We’re going to start with a protolanguage that isn’t using a triconsonantal root system – instead, it relies on prefixes and suffixes to inflect its verbs. Let’s say that we have a verb, kadag, and a prefix you can apply to that verb: i-. 

kadag, i-kadag

Now, let’s apply a prosodically conditioned alternation. Vowels in pretonic syllables (syllables directly before the stressed syllable) are ellided unless this would create a word-initial consonant cluster; when this is the case, they are reduced to /ə/.

kədag, i-kdag

(We’re assuming for now that the stress always falls on the last syllable.)

Now, let’s apply a segmentally conditioned sound change. If /i/ pulls non-high vowels in adjacent syllables to /e/, we end up with these forms:

kədag, i-kdeg

This looks a lot like a triconsonantal root system, especially when we compare these forms on other verbs:

*solok → səlok, islek

*noshaz → nəshaz, inshez

Over time, people stop thinking of these as mutations of an original root and instead start analyzing them as different forms of a triconsonantal root. This process is known as analogy.

CəCVC, iCCeC

Words that don’t match this pattern are regularized:

*mot → mot, imet → məmot, immet

Or, if they’re common enough, stick around in their irregular forms:

*kaz → kaz, ikez

You might notice that even in the regular roots this pattern isn’t perfectly consistent. Depending on the second vowel in the root, the first form will have a different second vowel. (Hence CəCVC.) If the second vowel is an /i/, things get even more complicated:

*takir – tekir, itkir

(Note that /i/ won’t affect subsequent /i/, as it’s already as fronted and closed as it can get. Also, note that the prosodically conditioned sound change happens before the segmentally conditioned sound change, so takir → təkir → tekir.)

Because of differences like these, Semitic languages divide verbs into conjugations. These are often based on “thematic vowel”. For this example  language, we’d probably have at least three conjugations based on thematic vowel:

Thematic vowel a: CəCaC, iCCeC

Thematic vowel o: CəCoC, iCCeC

Thematic vowel i: CeCiC, iCCiC

If you want to learn more on this subject, I’d highly recommend this video by Biblaridion. It’s an excellent resource on both triconsonantal roots and nonconcatenative morphology in general.

  • 1
    If you know about Semitic languages and are wondering “but what about derived stems?” I’ll get to them another time. The language that I’m working on has a derived stem system, and I’ll go into more detail on that then.
  • 2
    This work is the primary source I’m using here, and one that I’ll frequently use throughout this work. While others have previously come to the conclusion that triconsonantal root systems are simply extended forms of apophony, Simpson’s is one of the most commonly called upon that I’ve seen – probably because it goes into such depth.

The Kyol Language Family, Part I: Protolanguage Phonology

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Yes, I’m making another language family.

I’m taking a break from the last one until I have a more clear idea of where it fits. The cultures I had speaking those languages have been undergoing a lot of flux, as I’m still unsure where they fit into this world, and how I need to change them so that they work better. To continue developing those languages, I need a better understanding of their speakers – so they’re on hold until I can do that.

This language family shouldn’t have that problem. It’s in the part of the world that I’m currently developing. The protolanguage that I’m going to be talking about today originated in the Kyol River Valley. Languages of this family will be the dominant languages across the reaches of the empires descended from the bronze-age Kyol Alleigance.

Let’s now look at the phonology of that protolanguage:

This is a somewhat unconventional table. Primarily, this is because the main speakers of Proto-Kyol weren’t human, but Golkh – a species of bipedal sapient evolved from raccoon-like organisms. Because they still had a procyonid-esque jaw, their lips weren’t as mobile as human lips. This has a few consequences:

a. While Golkh can pronounce bilabials, they’re harder to produce, and thus rarer. The exception is the bilabial nasal /m/, which is simply formed with a closed mouth, and thus perfectly pronouncable to a Golkh.

b. Golkh can’t produce rounded vowels or labialized consonants.

It should be noted that the vowel ɤ is sulcalized. This means that it’s pronounced with a grooved tongue, similar to a sibilant fricative. This gives it a rounder sound, and thus helps to distinguish it from front vowels. Sulcalization is most documented in the extinct language Tillamook, but it has also been suggested that received pronunciation’s /ɒ/ is sulcalized, not rounded, in some speakers.

Now let’s note some of the other unusual things here. 

a. The inclusion of a full palatal series. I wanted this language to sound harsh and rasping, but given the number of other languages with uvulars I have planned for this world, I didn’t want to include them here. (Also, they seem like the obvious choice.) I like the palatals – they give a kind of gnashing hissing sound.

b. The three-vowel system, and specifically that I included an o-analogue over a u-analogue. I wanted to use as minimal a vowel system as possible, for reasons that’ll become apparent next post. I initially had a four-vowel system with both /ɤ/ and /ɯ/, but I found I wasn’t using /ɯ/ at all, so condensed it into this system. A vowel triangle with a mid back vowel is unusual, but not unheard of – it’s the system of piraha, and the short-vowel system of Ojibwe.

  • It’s quite possible that there was an /ɯ/ at some point that either merged with /ɤ/ or /i/; it’s also possible that there was an /e/ that merged with /i/ or /a/. We’ll explore these possibilities later.

c. The extra nasals & laterals. Partially, I want more phonemes – the somewhat constrained root structure of this language and the lack of labials means I’ll take what I can get. Also, I like the sound of them.

An Introduction to Kyol

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

The name “Kyol” is somewhat confusing. In my previous posts, Kyol has primarily referred to the Empire of New Kyol, an empire in the latter half of the postclassical era. This empire took their name in an attempt to call upon the glory of the Kyol Allegiance, the ancient empire from which New Kyol (alongside several other nations) sprung after its dramatic collapse. While these states differed significantly in technology and power structure, New Kyol took significantly after the old Alleigance with regard to many parts of the religion – thus, it made sense to talk about them as a direct through-line with the Allegiance when speaking about death practices. The Kyol Allegiance itself takes its name from the Kyol River valley where it originated. It is that valley I will talk about now.

The Kyol River lies on the western coast of the Continent, spilling down from a massive coastal mountain range. During the summer, the coast takes the brunt of the storms that have built up over the vast ocean that makes up much of the planet’s surface. The orthographic lift generated by the mountains sucks the remaining moisture out of the air, making the western coast one of the rainiest places on the planet. During the winter, the winds reverse course, and the same mountains that made Kyol so rainy in the summer block any residual moisture from the eastern portion of the continent. Because of the planet’s heightened axial tilt, temperatures regularly drop below freezing during the height of winter. This period is the cold drought, known as the dry season, where the plants lose their leaves to conserve water and prevent frostbite, turning the forest into a sea of brown and black branches.

The Valley is shielded from the worst of the weather. The mangroves of the coastline take the brunt of the cyclones, and the depression of the valley shelters it from some of the high winds. But it faces its own problems. During the summer, the river – and most of the low-lying ground in the valley – floods. Plants must adapt to surviving partial submersion for a third of the year or be restricted to the sides of the valley and rare patches of high ground.

Next up, I’ll be talking about some of the flora of this area, and the ways that they’ve adapted to this bioregion.

The Dead in Kyol, Part 3: Excarnation

Nilakash Roy-Faderman
Yazd Tower of Silence. By Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52080997

Let’s talk about defleshing – or, as it’s known in anthropology, excarnation. Excarnation is fairly common in a variety of earth cultures – embalming isn’t a practice that all cultures develop, but many want some way to keep part of their dead ancestors around. (We’ve discussed why this is so important to Kyolites in the last post.) This is often done by allowing the flesh to decompose. Many cultures bury their dead, digging their bones up after a set period. Other cultures practice sky burial, in which the corpses are placed in a high location (such as a mountain, tower, or tree), where the flesh can decompose and also be eaten by scavengers such as vultures or corvids. Among modern bone collectors, this is still a way that many deflesh their bones: burial and open-air defleshing are common methods. Dermestids (skin beetles) are also used for defleshing, and are one of few methods which can work on the skeletons of birds, fish and small mammals. Turns out that beetles are just better at defleshing than we are.

But part of the reason that the Kyolites practiced excarnation was to avoid the flesh being soiled. (As discussed in the last post, allowing the flesh to rot after death would taint the life force, potentially creating malicious undead spirits.) Allowing the flesh to decompose would defeat the point. So instead, Kyolites used what is referred to in the modern day as maceration. They stripped off most of the flesh using knives. The remaining flesh and skeleton was put in a cauldron filled with boiling water, as well as the ashes of marsh-dwelling seaweeds, which provided alkalinity. The bones were removed after a few days in this solution.

Skull of Louis IX preserved by Mos Teutonicus. By Cryx thypex – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100398976

Maceration as a religious process of excarnation is fairly unusual. Some Hawaiian cultures used underground ovens to deflesh bones in a similar process. In medieval europe, some high-status individuals were excarnated in the “Mos Teutonicus”, where the corpse was boiled in wine so that their bones could be transported to their homes. Lye maceration or maceration using other agents to dissolve the flesh is, as far as I can tell, a modern invention practiced primarily by enthusiasts of bone collecting.

However, it’s entirely possible that the Kyolites would have developed maceration early on. Since before the bronze age, the inhabitants of Kyol had been practicing water cremation in geothermal springs. Probably at some point a Kyolite attempted to cremate a corpse in a spring that wasn’t acidic enough to dissolve the bones. Given that the Kyolites already placed importance on the bones as part of the soul, it would be logical to collect these bones using a net, dry them, and take them back to the house. This process would become popularized and would be used by many people living in the area of suitable geothermal springs, until eventually another method of excarnation, the use of boiling and seaweed ash, would be discovered and popularized. This method was cheaper and simpler than transporting a body to geothermal springs, and so more families were able to maintain ossuaries after this method had been developed.

The process of maceration was complicated and unpleasant. The body gave off an unpleasant odor and left behind a brownish liquid (viewed by the Kyolites as the leftover impurities of the blood). Because of this, sorcerers were in charge of maceration. Nobody other than a sorcerer could enter the tent in which excarnation took place.

Even sorcerers had to be prepared properly. Incense partially blocked the harmful fumes. Decorated bone masks shielded them from the negative psychic influences of the impure spirits. Incantations at various stages of the process helped shield the sorcerer from negative influences and purify the corpse. (Like many other parts of these rituals and beliefs, the specific rituals varied widely by region.)

With that, I have a complete overview of death-related! I may go into further detail on some of these later, but we need to get a good overview of broader Kyolite society first.

The Dead in Kyol, Part 2: Disposal of Corpses

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Properly disposing of corpses was very important for the people of Kyol. If the blood was left to rot, there was a small chance that the deceased could become a revenant – a soul whose impure blood kept them anchored to the mortal realm and corrupted their mind towards evil. Thus, most people were cremated after death. In some cases, they’d be disposed of by an early form of water cremation. The body would be dumped into a highly acidic geothermal spring and allowed to dissolve.

While cremation was quick and simple, it had one major disadvantage – the bones weren’t preserved. Preserved bones acted as an anchor for spirits. After death, the soul moved out of the bones and went to the afterlife, which was much like the real world, though there one was immortal. The souls of those whose bones had been preserved could still move on to the afterlife, but could observe the world through their bones, and offer guidance and protection.

Thus, important people were excarnated (defleshed), allowing them to interact with the mortal world. The bones would then be put in ossuaries located in the house. As excarnation was expensive, and ossuaries had limited space, only the bones of the most important were preserved. Because of the cost of excarnation, which was higher in the early years of the practice, a family’s rise in wealth and status could be traced back to the time when the first bones were placed in their ossuary. As such, a large ossuary was a sign of status – an indicator that a family’s wealth was generational.

Spirits in the afterlife required sustenance. They could still hunt and farm in the afterlife, but they could also consume food that was burned near their bones. Burning offerings at the ancestral shrines was considered a sign of piety.