Lucien Cartier-Tilet
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273 lines
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#+setupfile: ../headers
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* Introduction
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** Language Evolution
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We are not sure which was the first language ever spoken in our world.
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Was there even one primordial language, or were there several that
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spontaneously appeared around our world here and there? We cannot know
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for certain, this is too far back in our history. Some scientists
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estimate the firsts of our kind to be gifted the ability to speak
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lived some hundred of thousand of years back, maybe twice this period
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even. There is absolutely no way to know what happened at that time
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with non-physical activities, and we can only guess. We can better
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guess how they lived, and how they died, than how they interacted with
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each other, what was their social interaction like, and what were the
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first words ever spoken on our planet. Maybe they began as grunts of
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different pitches, with hand gestures, then two vowels became
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distinct, a couple of consonants, and the first languages sprung from
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that. This, we do not know, and this is not the subject of this book
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anyways.
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What we do know is, languages evolve as time passes. One language can
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morph in the way it is pronounced, in the way some words are used, in
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the way they are shaped by their position and role in the sentence, by
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how they are organized with each other. A language spoken two
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centuries back will sound like its decendent today, but with a
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noticeable difference. Jumping a couple of centuries back, and we lost
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some intelligibility, and some sentences sound alien to us. A
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millenium back, and while the language resonates, we cannot understand
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it anymore. Going the other way around, travelling to the future,
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would have the same effect, except that we would not necessarily
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follow only one language, but several, for in different places,
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different changes would take place. As time goes by, these differences
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become more and more proeminent, and what was once the same langage
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becomes several dialects that become less and less similar to one
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another, until we end up with several languages, sister between
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themselves, daughters to the initial language.
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** Relating Languages Between Themselves
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We are not sure who first emited the theory of language evolution;
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this has been lost to time during the great collapse two thousand
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years back, and only a fraction of the knowledge from back then
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survived the flow of time. We’re lucky even to know about this. It’s
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the Professor Loqbrekh who, in 3489, first deciphered some books that
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were found two decades prior, written in Énanonn. They described the
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principle of language evolution, and how language families could be
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reconstructed, how we could know languages are related, and a hint on
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how mother languages we do not know could be reconstructed. The
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principle on how historical linguistics are the following:
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#+begin_quote
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If two languages share a great number of coincidentally similar
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features, especially in their grammar, so much so that it cannot be
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explained by chance only, then these two languages are surely related.
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#+end_quote
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By this process, we can recreate family trees of languages. Some are
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more closely related to one another than some other, which are more
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distant. Sometimes, it is even unsure if a language is related to a
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language tree; maybe the language simply borrowed a good amount of
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vocabulary from another language that we either now of, or died since.
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The best attested languages are the ones we have written record of. In
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a sense, we are lucky: while we do know a vast majority of the written
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documents prior to the great collapse were lost during this sad event,
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we still have a good amount of them left in various languages we can
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analyze, and we still find some that were lost before then and found
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back again. The earliest written record we ever found was from the
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Loho language, the oldest member of the Mojhal language tree attested;
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the Mojhal tree has been itself linked to the Ñyqy tree some fifty
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years ago by the Pr Khorlan (3598).
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#+name: tree-language-family
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#+begin_src dot :file proto-nyqy/nyqy-family-tree.png :results none :eval no-export
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digraph d {
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graph[dpi=300,bgcolor="transparent"];
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node[shape=plaintext];
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ranksep=.75; size="7.5,7.5";
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{
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"-10000" -> "-8000" -> "-6000" -> "-5000" -> "-4500" ->
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"-4000" -> "-3500" -> "-2000" ->
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"-1000" -> "-500" -> present;
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-8000";
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protonyqy[label="Proto-Ñyqy\n6,000 to 10,000 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-5000";
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protoma[label="Proto-Mojhal-Andelian\n4,000 to 6,000 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-4500";
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prototiltinian[label="Proto-Tiltinian\nca. 4,500 years ago"];
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protoandelian[label="Proto-Andelian\nca. 4,000 to 5,000 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-4000";
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protomojhal[label="Proto-Mojhal\nca. 4,000 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-3500";
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loho[label="Loho\nca. 3,500 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-2000";
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oldpritian[label="Old Pritian\nca. 2,000 years ago"];
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"ne’ic"[label="Ñe’ic\nca. 2,500 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-1000";
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oryora[label="Old Ryora\nca. 1,300 years ago"];
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oenanonn[label="Old Énanonn\nca. 900 years ago"];
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omanniki[label="Old Manniki\nca. 1,200 years ago"];
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midpritian[label="Middle Pritian\n 1,100 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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"-500";
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oauc[label="Old Auc\n600 years ago"];
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mmanniki[label="Middle Manniki\nca. 400 years ago"];
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}
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{
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rank=same;
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present;
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enanonn[label="Énanonn"];
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ryora[label="Ryora"];
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auc[label="Auc"];
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manniki[label="Manniki"];
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pritian[label="Pritian"];
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}
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protonyqy -> protoma;
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protonyqy -> oldpritian;
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protonyqy -> prototiltinian;
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protoma -> protomojhal;
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protoma -> protoandelian;
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protomojhal -> loho;
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protomojhal -> "ne’ic";
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"ne’ic" -> oenanonn -> enanonn;
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"ne’ic" -> omanniki -> mmanniki -> manniki;
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protoandelian -> oryora -> ryora;
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protoandelian -> oauc -> auc;
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oldpritian -> midpritian -> pritian;
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}
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#+end_src
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#+html: <ImgFigure src="/img/proto-nyqy/nyqy-family-tree.png" alt="Ñyqy Family Tree">Ñyqy Family Tree</ImgFigure>
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** Principles of Historical Linguistics
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So, how does historical linguistics work? How does one know what the
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mother language of a bunch of other languages is? In historical
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linguistics, we study the similarities between languages and their
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features. If a feature is obviously common, there is a good chance it
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is inherited from a common ancestor. The same goes for words, we
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generally take the average of several words, we estimate what their
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ancestor word was like, and we estimate what sound change made these
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words evolve the way they did. If this sound change consistently works
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almost always, we know we hit right: sound changes are very regular,
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and exceptions are very rare. And this is how we can reconstruct a
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mother language that was lost to time thanks to its existing daughter
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languages.
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But as we go back in time, it becomes harder and harder to get
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reliable data. Through evolution, some information is lost --- maybe
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there once was an inflectional system that was lost in all daughter
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languages, and reconstructing that is nigh impossible. And since no
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reconstruction can be attested, we need a way to distinguish these
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from attested forms of words. This is why attested words are simply
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written like “this”, while reconstructed words are written with a
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preceding star like “{{{recon(this)}}}”. Sometimes, to distinguish both from
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the text, you will see the word of interest be written either in *bold*
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or /italics/. This bears no difference in meaning.
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** On Proto-Languages
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As we go back in time, there is a point at which we have to stop: we
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no longer find any related language to our current family, or we can’t
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find enough evidence that one of them is part of the family and if
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they are related, they are very distantly related. This language we
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cannot go beyond is called a proto-language, and it is the mother
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language of the current language family tree. In our case, the
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Proto-Ñyqy language, spoken by the Ñyqy people, is the mother language
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of the Ñyqy language family tree and the ancestor of the more widely
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known Mojhal languages.
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There is something I want to insist on very clearly: a proto-language
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is not a “prototype” language as we might think at first --- it is not
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an imperfect, inferior language that still needs some iterations
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before becoming a full-fledged language. It has been proven multiple
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times multiple times around the world, despite the best efforts of the
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researchers of a certain empire, that all languages are equally
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complex regardless of ethnicity, education, time, and place. Languages
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that are often described as “primitive” are either called so as a way
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to indicate they are ancient, and therefore close to a proto-language,
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or they are described so by people trying to belittle people based on
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incorrect belief that some ethnicities are somehow greater or better
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than others. This as well has been proven multiple times that this is
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not true. A proto-language bore as much complexity as any of the
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languages currently spoken around the world, and a primitive language
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in linguistic terms is a language close in time to these
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proto-languages, such as the Proto-Mojhal language (which is also in
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turn the proto-language of the Mojhal tree). The only reason these
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languages might seem simpler is because we do not know them and cannot
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know them in their entierty, so of course some features are missing
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from it, but they were surely there.
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Note that “Proto-Ñyqy” is the usual and most widely accepted spelling
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of the name of the language and culture, but other spellings are
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accepted such as “Proto Ñy Qy”, “Proto Ñy Ħy”, “Proto Ḿy Qy”, or
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“Proto Ḿy Ħy”, each with their equivalent with one word only after the
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“Proto” part. As we’ll see later in [[file:phonology.md#consonants][Phonology: Consonants]], the actual
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pronunciation of consonants is extremely uncertain, and each one of
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these orthographies are based on one of the possible pronunciations of
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the term {{{recon(ñyqy)}}}. In this book, we’ll use the so called
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“coronal-only” orthography, unless mentionned otherwise. Some people
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also have the very bad habit of dubbing this language and culture as
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simply “Ñyqy” (or one of its variants), but this is very wrong, as the
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term “Ñyqy” designates the whole familiy of languages and cultures
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that come from the Proto-Ñyqy people. The Tiltinian languages are as
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much Tiltinian as they are Ñyqy languages, but that does not mean they
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are the same as the Proto-Ñyqy language, even if they are relatively
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close in terms of time. When speaking about something that is “Ñyqy”,
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we are generally speaking about daughter languages and cultures and
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not about the Proto-Ñyqy language and culture itself.
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Note also we usually write this language with groups of morphemes,
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such as a noun group, as one word like we do with {{{recon(ñyqy)}}}.
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However, when needed we might separate the morphemes by a dash, such
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as in {{{recon(ñy-qy)}}}.
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** Reconstructing the Culture Associated to the Language
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While the comparative method described in [[file:introduction.md#principles-of-historical-linguistics][Principles of Historical
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Linguistics]] work on languages, we also have good reasons to believe
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they also work of culture: if elements of different cultures that
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share a language from the same family also share similar cultural
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elements, we have good reasons to believe these elements were
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inherited from an earlier stage of a common culture. This is an entire
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field of research in its own right, of course, but linguistics also
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come in handy when trying to figure out the culture of the Ñyqy
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people: the presence of certain words can indicate the presence of
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what they meant, while the impossibility of recreating a word at this
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stage of the language might indicate it only appeared in later stages
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of its evolution, and it only influenced parts of the decendents of
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the culture and language. For instance, the lack of word for “honey”
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in Proto-Ñyqy but the ability to reconstruct a separate word for both
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the northern and southern branches strongly suggests both branches
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discovered honey only after the Proto-Ñyqy language split up into
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different languages, and its people in different groups, while the
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easy reconstruction of {{{recon(mygú)}}} signifying /monkey/ strongly suggests
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both branches knew about this animal well before these two groups
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split up. More on their culture in [[file:culture-and-people.md][Culture and People]].
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