Hallo conlangers!

On Tuesday 19 February 2013 20:39:08 R A Brown wrote:

> On 19/02/2013 16:11, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> 
> > On Tuesday 19 February 2013 09:19:46 R A Brown wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> >> I cannot think of any actual examples [of bogolangs]
> >> among natlangs.  The Slav influence on Romanian is
> >> obvious, and French acquired the front rounded vowels
> >> of neighboring Germanic, but neither are bogolangs.
> > 
> > Indeed not.  French, for instance, does not have the
> > kind of umlaut process German has - it arrived at its
> > front rounded vowels in a completely different way.
> 
> Yes, it did. Tho it alone of the Romancelangs has them and
> the proximity and, indeed, in some places, intermingling
> with Germanic speakers probably helped to maintain them.

This is likely.  BTW, I am pretty certain that Old High German
already had [æ], [ø] and [y] even though they don't show up in
writing - they were allophones of /a/, /o/ and /u/ then, and
there was no need marking them in writing as the conditioning
/i/ was still present where they occurred.  Only when unstressed
vowels were reduced in Middle High German, the front rounded
vowels and /æ/ became separate phonemes and had to be marked in
writing.

The strong Germanic superstratum influence on Old French probably
has something to do with the existence of front rounded vowels
in French alone among the major Romance languages.

> [...]
> > Yes.  This is a great difference between British Celtic
> > and a hypothetical British Romance.  British Celtic had
> > no dialect continuum on the continent to connect with
> > after about 400 AD, as Continental Celtic was extinct.
> > British Romance would interact with Gallo-Romance, as
> > the sea connects as much as it separates.  It would be
> > part of the Western Romance dialect continuum.
> 
> Yes, I think it would have to be.  What is often forgotten
> is that before the establishment of national standards and
> universal education, the western Romance area was a
> linguistic _continuum_ from Sicily to Picardy and through to
> Seville and Lisbon.

Yep!

>       IIRC Andrew assumed that there would
> have been a Saxon settlement in Britain, but on a lesser
> scale than *here*, and that the Romance speakers would
> thereby be separated from their continental brethren and
> develop independently.  But IMO that is not likely.  Even if
> they were separated by a Saxon speaking area, they would
> still have been too close to be isolated from continental
> Romance; they would not have been like the Romance speakers
> in the Balkans.

One would have to have the Saxons break through in the south all
the way to Cornwall in order to block the Britanno-Romance from
access to the Channel at an early date (which Andrew did not do).
 
> [...]
> > Front rounded vowels also disappeared in Welsh;
> 
> Yep - it is likely the Old British [u] moved forward to
> rounded high central [ʉ] before becoming unrounded [ɨ] which
> is maintained in the north Walian pronunciation till the
> present day (in the south it has fronted still further to
> become [i]).  There was probably a rounded mid central vowel
> before it became unrounded [ɘ] also.

Yes.  That's what I have read about it, too.
 
> > whether they were preserved in Cornish is AFAIK a
> > contentious matter among Cornish revivalists.  Breton, at
> > any rate, has them.
> 
> Re-enforced by the French around it.

Probably.

>       Breton has also
> developed some unique features through French influence; it
> alone of the modern Celtic langs has an indefinite article,
> and the perfect tense is not formed with the preposition for
> "after" followed by the verbnoun, as in its sister langs,
> but with "to be" + perfect participle for intransitive
> verbs, and "to have" + perfect participle for transitive ones.

Right.  These features show an SAE influence via French, and
a departure from the Insular Celtic pattern.

> However, back to a putative British Romance - I think the
> indications are that it would not have had the front rounded
> vowels of northern France.

Agreed.  They would probably have lost their rounding, as in
English and Welsh.
 
> > So yes, a loss of front rounded vowels in British
> > Romance is not unlikely.
> > 
> >> Old French had a rich set of diphthongs and a few
> >> triphthongs besides; later these all gave way to the
> >> monophthongs of modern French.  I see no reason to
> >> suppose that a British romance would have behaved the
> >> same way.
> > 
> > I see no such reason, either.  British Romance may have
> > a rich inventory of diphthongs and triphthongs.
> 
> It may well have done.  They Welsh are fond of diphthongs
> and English doesn't exactly lack them, so I think the
> preservation of them is likely.

Makes perfect sense.  This language may have lots of diphthongs!
 
> [snip]
> 
> > And as for the initial mutations of Brithenig, it is far
> > from certain that a British Romance language would have
> > them.  After all, English doesn't.
> 
> Yet it shares other areal features with Welsh. I've referred
> in an earlier email to the preservation of [θ] and [ð] in
> both languages (one could also add the preservation of [w]),

Yes, such areal features exist without doubt, even if the pathways
at which the relevant languages arrive at them are different, and
do not imply parallel sound changes.

> but more striking IMO is the development of periphrastic
> tenses with "to be" to express progressive or continuous
> action.  Such things are, of course, not unknown in Italian
> with "stare" plus the gerund, but I think this construction
> would have become as common place in Brit-Romance as it is
> in modern English.

Fine.  It would thus not be a surprise to meet such constructions
in Britanno-Romance.
 
> > This of course raises the question *when* these mutations
> > arose in the Insular Celtic languages.  Most Celticists
> > AFAIK assume that they happened between 400 and 800 AD
> > (and Continental Celtic languages never developed them,
> > Dan Jones's Arvorec notwithstanding),
> > 
> 	:)

I have a Continental Celtic lostlang on the back burner, meant
to be spoken in the French Alps, with no trace of initial
mutations or other Insular Celtic features.
 
> Yes, this is a features which is not areal since, as you
> observe, English does not have it.  Although they are an
> interesting feature, I am doubtful that a Romance language
> would actually have developed grammaticalized initial
> consonant mutation.

I wouldn't say it was impossible, but I don't think it is
very likely.

This Britanno-Romance thing is certainly an interesting project
for the LLL, but alas, I have enough things to do already.
 
> > but the name _Britannia_ seems to have a mutated initial
> > (otherwise it would be _**Pritannia_, cf. Welsh
> > _Prydein_) - but the /t/ in it shows that intervocalic
> > lenition had not happened yet in British Celtic of 2000
> > years ago.
> 
> I don't think much can be made of this.  The various Greek,
> Latin & British/Welsh forms are derivatives of some
> pre-Celtic and, almost certainly, pre-IE ethnicon - from Old
> Albic?   :)

The etymology I am familiar with ascribes it to a Proto-Celtic
*kWritan- 'many-coloured', but I have no idea where that comes
from.  It may indeed come from a pre-IE language.  Maybe Old
Albic _prith_ 'colour'?  (Ah, now I know what the Old Albic
word for 'colour' is.)
 
> We don't know what was going on in that unknown language.

Indeed not.

> [snip]
> 
> >> Yes - there usually has to be some fudging here because
> >> other languages rarely have the same phonetic inventory
> >> as Vulgar Latin.
> > 
> > Amen!  I had to fudge the sound changes, especially the
> > vowel changes, *a lot* when I was doing Roman Germanech
> > because Common West Germanic is quite far away from
> > Vulgar Latin in terms of phonology!
> 
> Always a problem for bogolangers.    :)

Indeed!

> ========================================================
> 
> On 19/02/2013 18:13, James Kane wrote:
> > Romanian is almost a real life altlang
> 
> Except for the small fact that it actually developed and
> exists in this world!
> 
> An _altlang_ by definition 'exists' in an alternate timeline.

Yes, and thus a language spoken *here* is not an altlang.
 
> > and IMO quite a cool language. It doesn't have an
> > identical phonology to the surrounding Balkan or Slavic
> > languages, nor did it go through the same sound changes
> 
> Exactly - it ain't a living example of a bogolang.

It just isn't!
 
> > but it is obviously influenced by them and different
> > enough from the other Romance languages (while still
> > obviously Romance) without resembling greatly any other
> > language.
> 
> There are resemblances to Romancelangs in the Balkan area
> that have now died out, and it does show certain features
> that make kinship with Italian fairly obvious.

Correct.  There are a number of Italian-Romanian isoglosses.
 
> One will notice that the Romansch dialects have similarly
> been influenced by the high German dialects spoken in
> contiguous areas, and the Moorish influence in Spanish is
> noticeable.

As is the Basque influence in Spanish and Portuguese.
 
> I admit Romanian is interesting, but I don't think any more
> or less remarkable than most other Romancelangs (personally
> I find the Reto-romance and the Sardinian dialects more
> interesting).

Romanian has some traits that set it off from other Romance
languages, such as its two-case system (which is of a different
type than the Old French one), and its obviously Slavic-
influenced phonology, but it should have become clear by now
that it is not a real-life bogolang!

>       I fail to understand how a living language
> can be "almost a real life altlang."

A "real life altlang" is a contradiction in terms.
 
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