cryptophilology

[cryptophilology]

Letter: The Curious Case of the Mythic Tense in Middle Rhodani

Editors’ note: this letter is being re-printed as part of our ongoing series of classic works in the field of cryptophilology, to celebrate the IJC’s 100th anniversary. It was originally published in the Winter 1955 issue of the IJC, in response to an article on Old Rhodani verb morphology.

Dear sirs,

In the Summer 1955 issue, you published an excellent piece by Dr. Uyedineynina of the University of Helsinki on certain aspects of Old Rhodani; I wish only to add a detail that has come to my notice in the study of Middle Rhodani, which may shed some additional light on the matter of the Old Rhodani pluperfect and its curious usage.

In Middle Rhodani, the same formation which we call in Old Rhodani the “pluperfect” (the -raka suffix; in MR contracted to -rke) is of even more restricted usage than in Old Rhodani, being found only in certain liturgical and poetical formulations which narrate events of great significance of very remote time. The nature of this “mythic tense” is further elaborated by the development of a comprehensive and quite inflexible system of evidential markings in MR, which require the writer or utterer of a sentence to explicitly denote how they know or suppose the action in question to have come to pass; and, as expected, the appearance of the mythic suffix is naturally most often accompanied by the infixes -satta-, for “general knowledge,” -burhi-, for “read in a book or heard from a knowledgeable elder,” -otoh-, for “repeated often in childhood tales, although not necessarily to be taken literally,” and -ket-, for “primarily metaphorical in nature, but with great spiritual and symbolic significance.”

I was nearly at the point of writing in my own study of the MR corpus that the mythic tense only appears with these four evidentials, when I happened to look into the chants found in the Book of the Drowned Land, where in the hymns to the Mournful Ones the -rke-tense is used repeatedly with the -masu- and -ayi- affixes! These are the evidentials for personally witnessed events and for things which are certain respectively: Ichemasutel, “I saw him die [and I was at the bed-side]”, for example, or Lakayiso, “The sun shall rise tomorrow [because it does every day]” or Turemaniayitel, “Two and two make four [because mathematics is structured to make it so].” The presence of the future affix and the lack of similar constructions make this unlikely to be a scribal error: the hymn-author is making a claim about the certainty of future events, which are not staked on a spiritual vision or prophecy (which would use evidentials in the -surri- form), on a sophisticated but nonetheless confident chain of reasoning (which would use evidentials in the -ayiyito- form), nor merely on an overwhelming balance of probabilities (the -sarhu- form).

While in Late Old Rhodani the raka-form had not quite finished its metamorphosis into a strictly mythic tense, it had begun to acquire many of the restrictions which would later define it in MR, restrictions violated only here, and in the anomalous inscription Dr. Uyedineynina flagged in his article, as either an unusual construction or a scribal error. Consider this letter a vote for the former interpretation.

Given that the narrated events in the Book of the Drowned Land concern the cataclysm at the end of time, the rising of the miserable dead and the final war of the righteous against the wicked, unique concerns of the cult-practice of the Mournful Ones, we may justly be concerned about the evident certainty of the author that these events shall one day come to pass, even as we take comfort that they are consigned to a very remote future by the inherent nature of the tense. How remote, alas, we cannot say; but given that the Book of the Drowned Land is at most 2,100 years old, perhaps we had better be sharpening our kidaya-swords and practicing our pronunciations of the Nine Glorious Blessings.

Regards, Dr. S.K Norfolk Trinity College Dublin

[cryptophilology]

On the Fugitive Case in Undermountain Sarkonic

By C.S.J. Ascension, University College London

Editors’ note: this article is being re-printed as part of our ongoing series of classic works in the field of cryptophilology, to celebrate the IJC’s 100th anniversary. It was originally to be presented at the cancelled 1939 International Cryptophilological Symposium, and was instead published in the Autumn 1941 issue of the IJC.

The Sarkonic languages are a small language family or group of dialects found exclusively within the the Sarkon Mountains, along the northern border of the Devouring Jungles of Atam-Thul. Owing to the geographical remoteness of the Sarkon Mountains and the fearsome reputation of their inhabitants, this family is little-studied, and, inspired by a melancholic sense of adventure and a desire to tempt fate, I journeyed there in summer of 1937 for the purpose of learning more about this often-overlooked people and their history.

Despite the numerous warnings of outsiders, I found the people of the Sarkon to be friendly and charming; it was explained to me that according to their oral histories they had populated this country when it was deserted by a far more fearsome nation, whose reputation they had happily kept up through elaborate displays, mock rituals of human sacrifice, and hideous architecture, as a disincentive to invasion by their neighbors. But now they tired of the ruse, and hoped to gain more by friendly cooperation and mutually beneficial intercourse than by intimidation and secrecy; and so they welcomed me among their number.

A full account of my time among the Sarkonic peoples and what I learned there is forthcoming [Editor’s note: see The Sarkonic Peoples: A Linguistic and Historical Examination, Ascension, C.S.J., UCL Press 1949], but of particular interest to this Society, I believe, is the case of Undermountain Sarkonic.

Deep beneath the Sarkon Mountains is a primeval network of caverns and tunnels, much of it carved by the slow action of water within sedimentary rocks. At the surface, the result of this geography is merely treacherous, opening pitfalls and sinkholes here and there, and forming highly perforated karst topography along the range’s southern hills. Deeper, however, these caverns form an enormous, trackless maze, a labyrinth of claustrophobic passages, ice-cold underground rivers, and sudden pitfalls.

Yet these caverns are not unpeopled. And though my friends and colleagues among the Sarkonic peoples discouraged me, with tales of awful eyeless monsters, I found my curiosity too piqued not to enter these caverns; alas, the rather more pedestrian danger of clumsy footing and a broken rope befell me, and I nearly perished--I was saved, however, by the people of the caves.

In their own tongue, they are the Telasnu, the people of the Undermountain. Though unknown to the surface-dwellers, they are in fact a Sarkonic people speaking a closely related tongue, and, if their oral histories are to be believed, the same “fearsome nation” that once lived in these mountains, and was later driven underground. Of their ferocious reputation I found no trace; and the untangling of the ancient dispute which led to these warring narratives is beyond me. They have a material culture at least as sophisticated as their aboveground cousins, and though conditions are dim and austere in their caves, they have developed numerous techniques for husbanding resources to survive; though I am still puzzled by many matters, ranging to their source of fuel for lamps, or the basis of their subterranean agriculture. I spent many weeks among them, before returning to the surface; and only grudgingly, and with assurances that the Society has no members among the people of the Sarkon, have they consented to my writing about them.

Undermountain Sarkonic is a conservative dialect of Sarkonic; it seems to form a separate branch of the family, participating in neither the consonant shift which lenited all medial consonants in West Sarkonic, nor the series of vowel breakings which removed all long vowels from East Sarkonic. It has several unique sound shifts, including a consonant correspondence analogous to the Verschärfung of Gothic or Old Norse within the Germanic family, and has lost the /o/ sound common to the other Sarkonic dialects, merging with /a/ or /u/ depending on context.

But most unusual is Undermountain Sarkonic’s elaborate case system, of which only rudimentary traces are apparent in the other Sarkonic dialects; whether it is the result of innovations building on scant foundations, or whether it is ancestral to the family, I cannot yet say.

The morphosyntatical alignment of Undermountain Sarkonic is split in no less than three ways: ergative-absolutive in the past tenses, nominative-accusative in the non-past tenses, and tripartite in all irrealis forms, including those used for future actions. Moreover, several other cases appear restricted to different synactic domains. Some of these correspond to overall alignment--the adessive case is found only in the past tense, the prolative only in the present--but others have more restrictive conditions attached. The instrumental case can only be used with inanimate objects; the translative case can only be used with plural nouns; the demicausative case can only be used if the speaker is female, or on the third day after a full moon. As the Telasnu have no way of tracking the phases of the moon, this last circumstance is puzzling.[1]

Most alarming to me, however, was a specific case which I have termed the “fugitive case.” As Telasnu syntax is quite orderly, and the morphology of nouns and their affixes quite fixed, albeit within a sophisticated system, it is easy to tell with only a little practice which elements of a Telasnu sentence are nouns, or pronouns, or verbs, or tense markers, or case markers, and so forth. There was one case marker which never occurred when I was attempting to elicit examples from my collaborators, but which I repeatedly overheard in casual conversation. Its use appeared general, as common as the genitive or accusative. Yet it was never mentioned when the Telasnu described their own language to me, which was especially puzzling, as the Telasnu (as befits a culture with so elaborate a language) have a well-developed understanding of their own language’s structure.

When I finally asked one interlocutor the meaning of this case marker, he immediately fell silent and refused to continue the conversation. Thinking this circumstance odd, I went to another, my most reliable colleague in my linguistic endeavors; but she simply ignored the question. It was only after many days of frustrating conversations, oblique questions, and extremely carefully worded requests which I pretended to address to the thin air or to blank cave walls, that a fuller picture of this case emerged.

The fugitive case cannot be talked about. This is a fundamental grammatical limit of the Telasnu language--less like a taboo than a law of nature. The prototypical form of its affix is unknown, and its manifestation is a derivation (happily quite regular) from the word it is attached to; but the rules for its derivation are dependent on speaker, time of day, season aboveground (which, I must remind you, the Telasnu have no regular knowledge of), progress of the irregular ritual calendar, and the recent rate of flow of a certain underground river. Its meaning, too, shifts within a particular cycle of meanings, with the meaning of the case being based on the context in which the speaker last used it.

Such a construction might seem to be totally unusuable by the speakers of any language, but apparently all this is quite natural to the Telasnu, and mastered at the same age as speech generally is. While perfectly intelligent and thoughtful, I have seen no evidence of unusual faculties in the Telasnu otherwise which might enable this opaque structure to function as well as it does.

According to a very old Telasnu tale, their culture-hero Kerta once hid an important secret inside a word, then hid the word itself; and only when the people of the Undermountain need it to save their lives will this word, and its secret, be revealed to them. It is tempting to think this is a meditation upon, or a reflection of, this fugitive case, which squirms away when the grammarian attempts to look at it directly. Although I cannot say precisely what it means, it is perhaps telling that this case is encountered most often in discussions of small things; of precious things; of privacy, and delight, and eagerly-anticipated joy.

As a condition of my writing about them and their language, the Telasnu intimated that they would prefer I not write down examples of the fugitive case; this is easy enough to oblige, as I cannot be truly certain I have any. As to colleagues in the Society who may doubt my description of Undermountain Sarkonic, I welcome you to journey to the Sarkon and hear this tongue for yourself. But take care! The mountain lions are hungry year-round.

[1] The Telasnu word for the moon is “It permits galu on the tongues of men,” -galu being the prototypical demicausative case marker. Interlocutors were unable or unwilling to attempt to describe the moon, save that it was in the sky, and not the Sun, and its cycle was associated with the use of the galu-case.

[cryptophilology]

Notes on Unusual Vowel Correspondences in the Utharic Languages

By R.K. da Cunha, University of Stockholm

Editors’ note: In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the International Journal of Cryptophilology, we are reprinting a number of historic papers from the journal’s early years, both to commemorate how far the field of cryptophilology has come and to hopefully inspire a new generation of scholars. This will, we hope, have the added benefit of making available a number of important articles which, owing to low circulation of the journal in its early years, are lacking from many libraries.

“Notes on Unusual Vowel Correspondences in the Utharic Languages,” by Dr. R. K. da Cunha, is a landmark early work which appeared in the Spring 1929 issue of the ICJ and predicted the existence of a ‘para-Utharic’ (as it was then called) language or language family, before the first decipherment of the Tables of Haruspicy, the discovery of the Graven Altar at Kalunak, or the entire body of the Misharan Codices, a remarkable feat whose only real parallels are perhaps the decipherment of the hieroglyphs by Champollion, or de Saussure’s prediction of the laryngeals thirty years prior to the decipherment of Hittite by Hrozný. Although the precise model of the ‘para-Utharic’ languages that da Cunha presents is now considered incomplete, it remains a starting point for much subsequent research. Sadly, Dr. da Cunha did not live to see the first decipherments of the Tables of Haruspicy, dying in mysterious and gruesome circumstances in Cartagena in 1932.

It has long been supposed that our understanding of the Utharic family of languages is woefully incomplete; that the family either has a much more complicated history than the archeology of the Ghilai region would suggest, or that our understanding of Utharic phonology is severely lacking. The general evidence for this point are the unusual vowel correspondences found in certain words, common to all branches of Utharic, which nonetheless defy explanation by the principle of regular sound-change, and for which many hotly contested and mutually exclusive explanations have been given--each of which, due to the ablaut-dependent morphology of proto-Utharic, radically alters our picture of the family’s overall structure.

Fortunately, I believe these are difficulties which can be sidestepped. Proto-Utharic is commonly accepted to have but three vowels, most commonly reconstructed *e, *o, *a. This system is perhaps unusual, but not unknown elsewhere, being seen in the otherwise unrelated New World languages of Yanesha’ in Peru, and Tsėhésenėstsestȯtse, or Cheyenne, in the United States. The reflex of these vowels in the daughter-languages is quite variable: Jintali has primarily consonantal values where Proto-Utharic has *e, and reverts to a two-vowel height-based system otherwise. Mishola alters the system to a more usual *i, *u, *a, albeit with numerous irregularities. In the languages of the Choval valley, various five-vowel (and possibly one seven-vowel) systems have emerged, although in Upper Northwest Chovali, any notion of a distinct “vowel” sound seems to have collapsed, with fearsome consonant clusters only occasionally interrupted by a sonorant or two being the rule.

Out of this difficult picture, however, the principle of regularity has been mostly successful at recovering an ordered picture of the relationship and progression of the individual Utharic tongues, and even for rehabilitating within its framework such apparently wayward cousins as Upper Northwest Chovali. Yet a number of puzzles remain, and it is these on which I wish to remark.

First, the difficult vocabulary is almost entirely restricted to a subset of roots dealing with metalworking, divination, astronomy, and medicine. We know from archeological evidence that the early Utharic peoples had no native metalworking industry to speak of, preferring to trade with surrounding peoples for such metal goods as they needed, until the so-called “Bronze Revolution” associated with the Chovalakka III phase. Lewisham and Gore reconstruct a number of proto-Utharic metalworking terms, arguing that since the Chovalakka III phase falls just within the terminus ante quem of proto-Utharic, these terms may date as far back as that period of the language. Yet in their eagerness to solve the mysteries of proto-Utharic--or, should I say, to run roughshod over them--they neglect the fact that at Chovalakka proto-Utharic most certainly had already broken up into mutually unintelligible dialects by then, and that while the sound changes associated with the non-Chovali branches of the family were still ongoing at that time, the Choval Valley was divided into no less than three separate dialects by then, each ancestral to a separate branch of Utharic; and metalworking spread south beyond the Choval Valley only later, after the southern branches had already begun to separate.

On the other cultural spheres it is harder to speculate on a common inheritance, since they have left less clear archeological traces. Yet we know that as little as two hundred years after the end of the Chovalakka III period, much of the trans-Utharan cultures were still undergoing a state of flux, attributed not to war or disruption but to cultural contact and innovation. The star-houses of Dhasal date to this period, and their friezes show a degree of common reference with later Utharic star-lore, and the first medical school at Barudei, though later still than the Dhasal star-houses, was built at the same time that Dhasali-Utharic astrology was spreading to Barudei. Therefore, it is conceivable, though far from certain, that these novel cultural practices spread as part of a common group of innovations from the north or northeast, along with new metalworking technology, and the associated vocabulary.

By removing these vocabulary items from proto-Utharic, we already solve a number of difficulties. Nonetheless, I wish to go one step further and argue that, as the period of contact with this “para-Utharic” culture (as I shall call it for the time being) was prolonged, and shows a number of different linguistic “phases” in itself, that the Utharan region was not merely in contact with one culture, but several, which may reflect a shifting center of power due to political struggles beyond the Utharan frontier, or different phases of development, or some other factor which altered how the Utharans dealt with their neighbors. I shall deal with several vocabulary items in turn below, to demonstrate what I mean.

Old Central Chovali *pituu, “star,” cognate to Old South Chovali *bidoa, Old North Chovali bvsr, otherwise unattested except possibly in Kidukanushan vek, “to polish metal.” The Kidukanushan form would be much later, if it is related. Although apparently following the usual correspondences between Central and Southern Chovali, in fact the broken vowel in Old South Chovali *bidoa and the preservation of rounding in the ending of Old North Chovali bvsr are both anachronistic: this would only be possible if the word had been borrowed from the more southerly language first, per Sullivan’s Law. Moreover, long *u in Old Central Chovali was not rounded, and borrowings of rounded vowels from other sources have distinct reflexes; while the reverse is the case in Old South Chovali. Clearly, a vowel cannot be both rounded and unrounded at once!

Middle Lanaran gnen, “forge,” is cognate to Pathari kiin, “kiln.” Although Pathari is non-Utharic, prolonged contact with Lanaran and its closest relatives and its better attestation allows insight into the development of Lanaran vocabulary. Pathari k’ien, “forge,” is tantalizingly similar to kiin, but no adequate explanation for the alternate form has been found--unless we posit a re-borrowing which displaced an older Lanaran root, which only partially underwent the Middle Lanaran sound-shifts, and which was not fully displaced in Pathari.

In Upper Northwest Chovali, the usual reflexes for the Old North Chovali vowels are [j ʕ x ɰ], with [ɹ] occasionally supplying roundness from a word-final vowel that was otherwise lost. But if we posit that the medical and astronomical vocabulary of Upper Northwest Chovali was largely directly inherited from Old North Chovali, we must explain anomalous vowel remnants, including many anomalous occurrences of [ɹ], in places not only unattested in Old North Chovali, but in many cases where they are phonologically impossible: see, for instance, the entries for csr, “liver,” tjfttr, “herbal infusion, tea,” and jʕsktn, “stargazer, daydreamer,” in the Chovali Etymological Dictionary, or Dr. Lkrntskp’s monograph on Upper Northwest Chovali phonology.

I believe it is possible to go a step further and re-create the vowel systems causing such problems for Utharic philology. All historical problems with these vocabulary items (and many more besides) can be resolved if we posit a language that in its earliest phase had a four-vowel system, *a *u *e *i, which later diverged, no earlier than the Raketu IV period, into two distinct but potentially still mutually-intelligible varieties, one with three vowels--*a *i *u, the most common form of a three-vowel inventory--and one with five, *a *e *i *o *u. A four-vowel system such as this is not exceedingly common, but nor is it unknown; it is found, for instance, in ancient Sumerian. It is difficult on the other hand to say much about the consonant system of this “para-Utharic” tongue, owing to the simple consonant inventory of the older Utharic languages, except that perhaps it did not change as much.

On this basis, I tentatively reconstruct the following early para-Utharic vocabulary items:

*petau, “planet, star, (celestial?) light”

*iHaS, “star, planet.” Owing to ambiguities inherent Old North Chovali, the value of H and S are uncertain, beyond some kind of back and coronal fricative, respectively. The distinction in meaning between *iHaS and *petau is not clear.

*taipu, “medicine, infusion, poultice”

*kiten, “person”

*sutesh, “flesh, body”

*taipu-kiten, “doctor, healer”

*iHaS-kiten, “astronomer, seer”

*Kien, “forge, kiln, furnace.” The value of K is here uncertain: it may be a fricative, ejective, or aspirate of some kind. My colleague, Dr. Kerguelen, has mooted the possibility of a geminate, which does not seem unreasonable.

*Kien-kiten, “smith, potter, baker”

*kilau, “knife, weapon?”

*kilau-kiten, “warrior?”

*Hain, “bronze? copper?”

*aSek, “iron”

*nira-kiten, “seer, haruspex, surgeon? butcher?”

The compound words are particularly uncertain, as they seem to reflect Utharic compounding rules above all else, and may be Utharic coinages. I hope to review additional evidence from Utharic and neighboring languages to try to develop a fuller picture of this mysterious adstrate language, but a deeper understanding may ultimately await further archeological investigations in the trans-Utharan frontier, which has until now been largely closed to us. As the Eyeless Throne has been taking an increasing interest in the arts and sciences of the outside world lately, I am hopeful we may not have many more years to wait.