The Praxian Beastrider Tongues from bjm10_at_cornell.edu on 1999-06-18 (Glorantha Digest Vol 06)

From: bjm10_at_cornell.edu
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 15:00:09 -0400 (EDT)

The Praxian Tribal Tongues
Little was recorded of the actual tongues spoken by the Beastriding tribes of Prax in the 17th centur (ST). This makes reconstructing their languages fairly difficult. However, gleaning through various ancient documents relating to Prax has given us at least a starting point. The following has been assembled from what little remains scholars have given us of the Praxian Beastrider tongue. It is mostly taken from place and individual names.

Phonology
The following phonology uses the "ASCII IPA" method of rendering the sounds. Consult the ASCII IPA page at
http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~laker/ipa/index.html for explicit explanation of the various symbols.

Consonants

            labial    labio-  dental    alveolar  alveo-     velar   glottal
                      dental                      palatal
stop        p b                           t d                 k g       ?
fricative             f v       T         s z
affricative                                                             h
approximant w                             r         j
nasal       m                             n


Vowels
        front               central              back
high      I
                    I
close-mid                                         o
                              _at_
open-mid  E                   V''
          &
low       a                                       A

Morphology
As far as can be determined, Praxian morphological roots appear to have been mostly of the forms CVC, CVVC, or CCVC, where VV is a diphthong and CC is any stop followed by an approximant. Words could be formed by combining two, three or rarely more basic morphological elements. Glottal stops only occured at the end of an element, and their presumed existence is more theoretical than any of the others. Some parodies of Praxians discovered in Pavic comedies leads to the conclusion that unvoiced stops were very often aspirated wherever they occured in a word. When combined elements abutted the same or very similar sounds, the second was often eclipsed by the first. Inserting /_at_/ between elements in a word also appears to have been done, although complete rules for this have yet to be adduced.

Sample Name Elements

Initial     Final


/nor/       /grIm/

/vAr/       /k&nT/

/nAr/       /ji:p/

/bAr/       /ni:n/

/gEn/       /zA:d/

/dAk/       /mi:d/

/mor/       /nV''rt/

/wAh/       /fAl/

/aIr/       /kA?/

/pr_at_k/      /TA?/

            /sA?/

Feminine can be indicated by -/_at_/- infix between first and second elements, e.g., /nor_at_ji:p/ from /nor/- and -/ji:p/. When vowel or diphthong end of first element is high, the feminization infix is -/I/-, e.g., /aIrIT_at_/, from /aIr/- and -/Ta?/. When final consonant is a velar or glottal consonant, an -/_at_/- infix or - -/_at_/ suffix must be used in male names, e.g., /dak@fal/ from /dak/- and - -/fal/.
The final -/A?/ of second elements that end in /A'/ is usually weakened to /_at_/ or can even be dropped, e.g., /pr&ks/ from /prak/- and -/sa?/.

Syntax
Too little of Praxian has been discovered to the present to draw any conclusions at all regarding Praxian syntax and grammar.

Orthography
Praxian appears to have never been a written language. What little recorded Praxian has been found was always written using the characters and orthography of whatever outsider was doing the recording.