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Jan van Steenbergen wrote: > > Medolian is (I've lost my notes on it :o(, so that should be *was*) > > a Occitan-esque language. > > Ouch, that's sad! > > Isn't Arveuneic an Occitanesque language too? Were they part of the > same project? Have you lost your notes about this one, too? Alas, yes. Arveuneic was really Medolian's sucessor. I lost the notes on both when my old computer upped and died on me. I'd only managed to back up Arvorec and my Aredos-derived languages; even Jelbazech didn't escape unharmed. I had enough extraneous material to reconstruct the basics of Jelbazech as she was, but then decided I didn't like it. I know a lot more about Romance Linguistics now than I did then and the way it was totally isolated in the family really bugged me. > Actually, I remember you made mentioned several other projects on > RomanceConlang (D�n�, f.ex.). If there's anything you'd like to see > added to the list, please do tell! The "Latin with Old Norse sound-changes" project was really just me amusing myself. It never really got anywhere beyond a set of sound changes. Alas, how many conlangs do we simply use and then toss aside? ;o) > > For example, Catalan and Occitan are more closely related to each > > other than either is to Spanish or French. > > Sure. It's one big continuum after all; any line drawn will be > arbitrary to some degree. Excellent schedule, BTW. Thanks :o) > > --Northern Romance > > ----Slezan > > ----Slvanjec > > ----Wenedyk > > Actually, Benct and I decided to call it "Northeast Romance". > Genetically they are closer to West Romance than to East Romance, > although it can be argued that they are a separate third subgroup. Noted. What's the internal reason for them to be closer to Western Romance? What with colonisation of the lands which became the RTC percolating north from Dacia, I would have assumed it would be closer to East Romance. Having said that, though IMHO, Wenedyk seems closer to E-R than W-R: retention of three genders, lack of intervocalic voicing of the fortis stops, retention of case; all markers of E-R (among others, that is. And not all isoglosses are shared by all E-R langs). I do like the idea of a third subgroup, though. > > Jelbazech forms its own subgrouping withing the Easten Romance > > branch > > Eastern Romance? Th�t's interesting! The rationale behind this is that Helvetia was fairly remote and peripheral, so archaic features would have been preserved longer. During the later years of the Western Empire, the "centre of gravity" had largely shifted to southern Gaul and northern Italy, and in these areas the language developed faster, while in the peripheral areas outside the cultural hub (Dacia, the Balkans, Helvetia, Southern Italy) dialects were more conservative. Old Jelbazech (until c. 1100 CE) had more in common with Old Romanian and Old Italian than Old French or Old Provencal. Intervocalic consonants were largely retained, the vowel system was fairly close to Old Italian and Old Romanian, the case system persisted for longer (still used in Modern Jelbazech!), the infinitive is avoided and the neuter gender was only lost in Early Modern Jelbazech (c. 1600). Jelbazech also has quite a lot of vocabulary in common with Romanian and Italian, but not the other areas (e.g. cra "tomorrow", c.f. It. crai, a inschurarse "to marry", c.f. Southern It. inzurare, Rom a se insura). Of course, many of the phonological similarities have been obscured by the Germanic adstrate, as Middle Jelbazech took part in the consonant shifts, i-mutation and vowel breaking of MHG. > > -PROTO-SARDINIAN > > --Sardinian > > Don't forget Jovian! I probably has little more in common with > Sardinian than that both split off relatively early from Latin, but > there you are! That's why I called them "early split-offs". I din't forget Jovian- I just didn't know where to put it! Dan