Category: worldbuilding

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 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.

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 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.

The Dead in Kyol, Part 1: The Two Parts of the Soul

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Note: This is a bit different (and shorter) than my previous posts. I’m now doing some culture-building, focused on the area of Kyol, a region in the subtropics. I’ll discuss Kyol more broadly later, but for now, here’s a bit of their religion. (I’ve been on airplanes for most of the past few weeks, so I unfortunately don’t have time for much more than this right now.)

The people of Kyol, like many on earth, divide the soul into two parts.

The first part is blood, the animating force. A newly conceived child takes a portion of its mother’s blood to sustain it, which then multiplies as it grows. This vital force in each individual is centered in the heart, which produces and purifies it.

The second part is bone, the part that allows for thinking and experiencing emotion. Bones aren’t transferred from the mother to the child – they are created upon conception. As such, it’s also the individual part of the soul – the part that distinguishes one person from another. This spiritual force is found in all the bones, but it’s most central in the skull.

The loci of these concentrations of spirit (the heart and skull) in part explains how this idea came about. If you stab someone in the heart, they generally die. But if you even slightly damage someone’s skull, they often start acting weirdly. This solid object that persists after death and looks similar to one’s face seems far more significant than the lump of jelly inside it. (Some historians theorize that the original two-soul system was specifically the heart and the skull, until it was later rationalized as blood and bone by philosophers.)

In the next posts, I’ll discuss the practical ramifications of this system, with particular regard to the afterlife and the disposal of the dead.

Avoiding the “Fantasy Racism” Trope

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Fantasy racism is, simply put, “discrimination and/or prejudice involving fictional races or non-human species.” (According to TVTropes, at least.) Specifically, we’ll be talking about that second part – non-human species – because it’s what’s most immediately relevant to the world I’m building.

This is a trope that’s hard to do right. There are countless online articles, video essays, etc. that have broken down how fantastic racism in various media ends up with unintended and unfortunate implications about race – or worse, entirely intentional and unfortunate implications.* Even when fantasy racism is done well, there are some issues with the concept as a whole (that I may end up addressing in another blog post down the line).

* I’ve seen all kinds of things get critiqued, but by far the most common is the urban fantasy film “Bright,” which (although I’ve never watched it) seems to be a paragon of how not to do fantasy racial allegories.

It’s also just not a trope I’m particularly interested in developing. Fantastical allegories for racism are ubiquitous. It’s so common a trope in works with multiple species (or types of magic user, or whatever) that not including it is, I think, more unexpected and interesting than having it present. I’m sure there are still versions of this trope yet to be created that are still interesting, fresh, able to invigorate this trope with new life. But boring, repetitive versions have been done so often that the trope itself often leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I also simply don’t want to devote the time to trying to think of a new version of this trope that breathes new life into it. (Why do that when you could spend months mapping your world according to the Koppen Climate Classification?)

Of course, that’s not to say that there won’t be discrimination in this world. It’s just not going to fall along species lines, and it’s not generally going to be a direct parallel for modern Western visions of race.

Unfortunately, speciesism is hard to get rid of for reasons other than habit. The big problem is how seemingly inevitable it is. When two groups come into conflict with each other, more often than not they’ll try to find some fundamental distinction between them. This can be race, it can be language, it can be religion – really, anything works. And when you have two groups who are of different species coming into conflict, species is probably going to be fairly obvious as a “fundamental difference”. 

The first way I tried to get around this issue is by making it so that there are never single-species societies. If, from the onset of sapience, the two species have worked together and formed societies together, it might never occur to them to draw distinctions along species lines. Instead, self- and other-hood could be understood based along cultural differences, rather than appearance differences – language, religion, etc. Unfortunately, it’s not particularly plausible that these societies would be the first to occur – or, if they were, they wouldn’t last very long in comparison to single-species groups. In hunter-gatherer societies, which are generally fairly small, inbreeding can become a problem. Because of this, hunter-gatherers often practice exogamy with neighbouring tribes. But if each society is made up of two species, the available gene pool is cut in half. Each tribe would need to be able to coordinate meeting with twice as many tribes to have the same level of genetic diversity. Societies made up of two species would be at a considerable disadvantage to societies made up only of one.

But there’s another method for getting around species-based prejudice. Instead of worrying about the groups in conflict, you worry about the conflict itself. What if the two species simply never clash? This seems hard to achieve. One option is for the two species to not be in competition for the same resources. There’s no reason for them to fight if there’s nothing for them to fight over.

This is the case for the humans and the golkh. Golkh can get enough nutrition from small sources of meat – rodents, birds, insects. They also are more disease-resistant than humans, meaning they can more reliably scavenge meat and eat windfall, and more toxin-resistant. But they’re worse at hunting than humans, meaning they don’t try and take down large game. As such, Golkh and humans won’t be in competition for food. Humans eat primarily large game which Golkh can’t hunt, as well as some plants (like roots, tubers and fruit). Golkh eat small game which is inefficient for humans to hunt, as well as scavenged meat, windfall, fungi, and some other flora. This neutralizes other potential resources which can be sources of conflict. As they don’t share a food source, territory won’t be as much of a concern – the two species can extract different resources from the same patch of land.

In some of these cultures, this cohabitation may evolve into a kind of mutualism. Humans may rely on Golkh to dispose of rotting meat, or to clear out pests, with the golkh getting a meal out of the exchange. Or perhaps a society of agrarian golkh relies on human hunter-gatherers, who trade the golkh meat that they wouldn’t be able to hunt for technology that the humans didn’t have access to. Eventually, these societies may become reliant on each other, shaping their lifestyles around this constant exchange.

Evolving Sapience (The Golkh, Part 2)

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

To understand the biology of the modern golkh, we need to understand where they came from. Let’s start out by examining an early ancestor: Primonasus sp., of the tribe Primonasini in the subfamily Procyoninae.

Primonasus was omnivorous, eating fruit, insects, fungi, and occasionally small birds and rodents. They lived in temperate forested habitats. They were semi-arboreal, scaling trees to avoid predators and forage for food. A partly opposable hallux and pollex assisted them in climbing.

Climatic shifts began to erode at the forest ecosystem. Drier interiors made forests give way to woodlands, to savannah, and eventually to arid grasslands. Organisms had to adapt to increased heat and limited food. Primonasus was in a good position to adapt for food scarcity: good at scavenging/foraging and able to use a variety of resources for food. This second capability further developed in the desert. They supplemented their diet with scavenging, and eventually evolved resistances to many common pathogens found in meat in the early stages of decay.

Using tools (a capability Primonasus already possessed) helped with foraging – tearing thick hide from carcasses, chopping through woody coverings around tubers, extracting grubs from borrows, mounds or trees. As tool use became critical to survival, a fully opposable pollux was selected for.

This brings us to bipedalism. Primonasus already could stand on its hind legs. Permanent bipedalism freed up the front limbs for better tool use. Fast moving wasn’t as important for them as it was for humans. They were primarily scavengers, not pursuit hunters, using tools for extractive foraging (and, occasionally, disuading their few natural predators). As such, the posture they used for walking wasn’t particularly efficient – there was never the selective pressure to force them to adapt to quick movement. Their gait was slow and shambling, and, though they could stand more or less upright, they typically walked with bent knees and a forward-angled back. To help balance, their foot shape somewhat changed, resulting in their halluces no longer being opposable. However, their toes remained far more dextrous than that of humans, allowing them to more easily navigate rough terrain. 

Heat was also a factor that shaped the modern Golkh. Like humans, they lost most of their fur. (Yes, that’s the reason that I often draw them with wrinkles – their modern forms bear a slight resemblance to a sphynx cat, or a Mexican hairless dog). However, they didn’t keep a patch of hair over their head. In humans, this patch shielded the head from the sun. Given human bipedalism, this was especially important, as their heads were far more exposed than the rest of their body. However, the stance of these early Golkh exposed both the head and the back of the torso to the sun. Instead of hair, the Golkh instead relied on preexisting traits of their coloration. Like many carnivora, Primonasus exhibited countershading – a lighter underbelly and a darker top. In the desert, this feature adapted for sun protection. In addition to a large overall increase in melanin production, the back and top of the head of these early Golkh became much darker. (Like in humans, this trait would diversify as the Golkh moved into different climates, with different groups having different skin colors, but some trace of the darker back would always remain.)

Golkh also had to deal with heat dispersion. However, they didn’t need to be as efficient at this as humans. Sweating for evaporative cooling is useful in humans in part because it can be toggled on and off – greater exertion heats up the body and triggers sweating. But, again, the Golkh were scavengers, not pursuit hunters. They lived at a fairly constant rate of exertion. Sweating, as such, didn’t have as many advantages, and was a waste of valuable water in an arid environment. Instead, the ears of Golkh enlarged (an adaptation seen in many hot-habitat creatures – big ears means more surface area, which means better heat dispersal.)

Creating a Conlang Family Part 14: Planning Aspect & Mood Morphology in Language 1a

Nilakash Roy-Faderman

Before we get into the morphology, I think now is a good time to talk some about my morphological visions for the 1a and 1b language lineages. We’ve already established protolanguage 1 as an agglutinative, heavily inflected language. The 1b lineage slowly shifts towards simpler inflectional morphology – while it still relies on the direct-inverse system and polypersonal agreement, many other inflections are replaced by periphrastic constructions. We’ve already seen this at work as the aspect system in protolanguage 1 replaces the tense system in language 1b, meaning that perfect and prospective meanings will have to be created with adverbs, time clauses, or some other construction that is yet to be determined. Language 1a, on the other hand, will not only keep much of the morphological complexity of the protolanguage but also develop new morphology.

We’ve already discussed how the affixation of light verb constructions led to the development of aspect morphology in protolanguage 1. However, we’ve only scratched the surface of what this process could do. Protolanguage 1 could have developed other aspectual affixes, and even modal ones – affixes that would be lost entirely in language 1b, but retained in language 1a. 

Furthermore, let’s say that this process happened a second time, after the sound changes that led to language 1a. A new set of verbs, which could themselves take the aspectual and modal prefixes of protolanguage 1, became light verbs and then prefixes on the stem. Keep in mind that these prefixes don’t take vowel harmony. In fact, they block it, transmitting their own vowel harmony to the previous prefixes. This results in two classes of aspectual/modal prefixes (harmony-blocking and non-harmony-blocking). Up to one prefix from each class can be attached, with the non-harmony-blocking prefix coming before the harmony-blocking prefix. 

Now, we need to decide what these prefixes are. This was a fairly simple process. First, I came up with a list of the aspects and moods I wanted to be conveyed this way. Then, I divided them up in a way that maximized the utility of the potential combos. Here’s what I came up with:

Harmony-affected Preverbs
Function Original Verb Meaning
Perfect have
Prospective go
Permissive get
Obligative

owe

Harmony-blocking Preverbs
Function Original Verb Meaning
Durative remain
Iterative return
Inchoative start
Cessative stop
Abilitive/Potential know
Desiderative love

I’m calling these affixes preverbs for now, although I’m not particularly happy about it. “Preverb” isn’t a widely accepted linguistic term, and although it is discussed in the context of Caucasian and Algonquinian languages (two major inspirations for this language), it’s used there primarily for location/direction meanings, with the aspectual & modal information that they could convey being secondary. However, I’m calling them preverbs until I can think of something better, because “Harmony-blocking and Non-harmony-blocking modal and aspectual prefixes” was proving far too clunky.

So that’s the preverbs done! This isn’t the end of verb inflection, but the conlang is slowly forging ahead. I haven’t done any further reading recommendations in a while, so now might be a good time to mention the World Lexicon of Grammaticalization. It’s available online, and is an excellent resource for anyone interested in conlanging. It gives a list of common lexical sources for grammatical meanings, as well as the ways that grammatical meanings can change over time. It’s fairly comprehensive, and has a handy glossary at the beginning.