#constructed world

Capt Margaret C. Patterson (2IC, B Company, 7th Aubrysian Parachute Battalion, 3rd Airborne Brigade, 1st Airborne Division) prepares to fire the AB42 MK IA 5.56mm automatic rifle during a live fire drill at Shigakwa Barracks - March, 1994

The Aubrysian Ordinance Factories AB42 first entered service with the Aubrysian Armed Forces in 1984 in its MK I iteration to replace the popular but venerable AB2 battle rifle. It is a short-stroke piston, rotating bolt, gas-operated automatic rifle chambered for the 5.56x45mm cartridge.

Subject Object Verb Link

The Creator stood upon the mountain and overlooked a frozen land. This is how it was in the beginning.

English is an SVO language which means that, typically, the subject comes before the verb which comes before the object. I don't know how to explain what each of these is as it's not as simple as agent-patient (the one doing the verb and the one being acted upon). We understand subject, object, and verb even if we can't entirely formulate the words to entirely explain them. "The dog bit me" and "I was bit by the dog" mean the same thing, the agent and patient are the same in both, but the subject and object switch.

SVO isn't the only word order either. We'll use the words "She hit me" in all word orders:

SOV: she me hit (Japanese)

SVO: she hit me (English)

VSO: hit she me (Irish)

VOS: hit me she (Fijian)

OVS: me hit she (Urarina)

OSV: me she hit (Warao)

I ordered these from most common to least common word order as well - and before going to Wikipedia for example languages! (Had SOV and SVO switched on the list initially though)

SOV accounts for almost half of the world's languages. But there's actually one other word order: free word order. This was the word order of Latin that would eventual be replaced in the Romance languages with groups preferring to use words in certain orders, most of them being SVO. The way that Latin did this is by markings that indicate what is what through a nominative-accusative system, one of the morphosyntactic alignment systems.

These systems are dependent on the syntactic relationship between various components of a sentence rather than placement of words within the sentence. The simplest system is the Dixon argument system:

(S)ole - the subject of a transitive verb

(A)gent - the subject of an intransitive verb

(P)atient - most times called the Object, but I like giving it more separation from word order, the object of a transitive verb

And the various alignments:

Nominative-Accusative - S=A ; P

Ergative-Absolutive - S=P ; A

Active-Stative - S¹=A ; S²=P

Austronesian Alignment - both S=A ; P and S=P ; A are true, people can choose to use either, although there are common triggers for each, working similar to voice in English

Direct Alignment - there is no distinction between S, A, or P, it's based on context clues

Tripartite Alignment - S, A, and P have their own separate cases

Transitive Alignment - A=P ; S

The most basic breakdown of the section chosen without any alteration to words to mark for anything is this:

Creator stand mountain overlook land-(frozen). This be beginning.

Marking them again for word position:

Creator stand mountain and overlook land-(frozen). This be beginning.

And now marking for argument:

Creator-A stand mountain-P and [Creator-S] overlook land-(frozen)-P. This-A be beginning-P.

Creator here is both the Sole and Agent in the same sentence since there's 2 verbs linked by an "and" which, in English, implies the subject being used again if no new subject is presented. Stand and Be are intransitive verbs where Overlook is transitive. Transitive verbs require an object for the subject to act upon where an intransitive verb can be acted upon by a subject without an object. You can say "I'm standing" and that's a complete sentence but you can't say "I'm overlooking" and have it be a compete sentence. "I'm standing" can take on an object with a preposition such as "on", but "I'm overlooking" always requires an object that is being overlooked and takes the object without the need for a preposition.

There's a few ways we can deal with the double argument:

Implied argument change - the subject is implied in the second part and so is the argument

Prepositional argument change - the preposition takes on the argument for the subject, so "and-S" would be its own separate thing from "and-A"

Repetition argument change - having to use the subject both times, changing only the argument

There's also other noun classes that can be used. For the nouns we have, we can go for a number of different possible cases (and this isn't an extensive list, just what would work here):

Creator : direct, ergative, nominative (not the intransitive case even though there's an intransitive verb because the preposition makes it grammatically act like a transitive verb and we could even make stand-on its own verb)

Mountain : absolutive, accusative, direct, locative, prepositional, superessive

Land : accusative

This : ergative, identical, nominative

Beginning : ablative, accusative

Could've missed some, but here we are. Thinking of cases, there's a hierarchy that languages typically follow, although breaking from these typicalities is typical of language as well. It's a general rule rather than a hard-set law.

nominative > accusative or ergative > genitive > dative > locative or prepositional > ablative and/or instrumental > others

Generally, if they're missing one of these, they are missing all after it. Such as, if there's no dative case, there likely isn't a locative, prepositional, ablative, instrumental, or others.

Verbs also have their own "classes" leading to what's called conjugation. Anything that changes a noun can even affect the verb form, such as having verb-a for a nominative and then verb-b for an accusative. The main ones to focus on first are gender, person, tense, and aspect.

Linguistically, gender has nothing to do with biology or psychology, although it's often tied to human biological genders (male and female). Could even look to a "spiritual gender" such as the concept of two-spirit in Amerindian cultures where one person has both a male and female soul and are, as a result, closer to the spiritual. That's why the culture building is an important part of language building. I imagine Mochian culture as having a belief in 3 souls: the genderless immortal soul that reincarnates, the soul that is inseparable from the body (and thus is what the body is) that rests when they die, and the soul that is created by memories that dies once they are forgotten. The memory-soul's "gender" is what they are remembered as and has nothing to do with one's biology.

Person depends on perspective. We all know first, second, and third person. First person is from the perspective of the subject "I ran home". Second person is from the perspective of the other "you ran home". Third person is from the perspective of an outside observer "they ran home". But there are other persons to go with. Could simply split the third person to have one case for denoting the topical person and the other case for the obviate person. Could even have a 4th person or a 0 person for an indefinite general referrence.

Tense is another commonly understood one. English has three - past, present, and future - right? Actually, no. That may be true in an abstract temporal sense but not in a linguistic sense. English only has two tenses: past and non-past. "I wanted", "I want", and "I will want" are all talking about want at various temporal moments, the past being "I wanted". But "I want" and "I will want" are using the same grammatical tense, the non-past tense. The word "will" is adding context about the non-past verb "want" to denote this as a future thing that is to come. But there are languages that do have a dedicated future tense so "I will want" would have "will want" as a singular verb with a future tense, so it's more like "I want-F". There are a lot more tense systems - and even tenseless systems which rely on context clues and "helper" words. Past-Nonpast is as described, Present-Nonpresent and Future-Nonfuture work similarly. Tenses work in two ways: relative or absolute. An absolute tense is relative to the "now", a relative tense is relative to another point in time. A relative tense can also be divided between a strict relative and an absolute-relative tense. Strict relative is relative to just some point in time, absolute-relative is relative to a point in time that is relative to the "now". "I ran", "I sweat when I run", "I will be running tomorrow" are examples of absolute, strict relative, and absolute-relative, in that order.

Aspect is another side to temporal marking. Rather than telling the point in time, aspect tells the finality, or lack thereof, of the verb. These do more than just say whether or not the verb is ongoing (continuous "I'm running") or complete (perfect "I ran"), it can also tell that it happened in a single moment (momentane "I sighed"), that it's done regularly (habitual "I run everyday"), that it almost happened (defective "I almost fell"), and that it is beginning (inceptive "I'm about to run").

So breaking down the verbs:

Stood : Past tense, perfect aspect of Stand

Overlooked : Past tense, perfect aspect of Overlook

Is how it was : Past tense, perfect progressive aspect of Be

All of these verbs had an ending, all of them happened before the present, one of them is the end of some that was continuous. Last thing I want to get to is adpositions and modifiers, which are divided between prepositions (preceding their complement) and postpositions (following their complement). The main thing about adpositions to look at is Hawkins' Universals:

Preposition ⊃ ( (N-Demonstrative v N-Numeral v N-Possessive ⊃ N-Adjective) & (N-Adjective ⊃ N-Genitive) & (N-Genitive ⊃ N-Relative) )

Postpositions ⊃ ( (Adjective-N v Relative-N ⊃ Demonstrative-N & Numeral-N & Possessive-N) & (Demonstrative-N v Numeral-N v Possessive-N ⊃ Genitive-N) )

Lemme explain what you're looking at...

If the language is Prepositional, then is the Demonstrative, Numeral, or Possessive comes after the Noun then the Adjective will come after the noun, if not then it can go either way. If the Adjective is after the Noun, then the Genitive will come after the Noun, if not then it can go either way. If the Genitive comes after the Noun, then the Relative will come after the Noun, if not it can go either way.

If the language is Postpositional, then if the Adjective or Relative come before the Noun, then the Demonstrative, Numeral, and Possessive will come before the Noun, if not then they can go either way. If the Demonstrative, Numeral, and Possessive come before the Noun, then the Genitive will come before the Noun, if not then it can go either way.

I just threw a lot of words at you so I should define things that you probably don't know (we all know what an Adjective and Noun are, right? I don't need to define those, right?).

Demonstrative : "this" and "that" words, indicating what's being referred to

Numeral : "one" and "once" words, indicating the quantity of what's being talked about

Possessive : 's, indicating the owner of a thing

Genitive : an expression of the relationship between two nouns

Relative : a clause that modifies a noun

And finally, languages have hierarchies in the order of a modifier. The modifier hierarchy for English so as so:

Quantity > Opinion > Size > Age > Shape > Color > Origin > Material > Purpose > Noun

You don't say "the grey round old stone", you say "the old round grey stone". In an agglutinative language, you could pile all of these into one word, mashing word pieces together to build a bigger word. "The old grey stone" could be theoldgreystone if English were agglutinative.

Happy Earth Day 2024!

As they went on a walk by a small river that flowed through the outskirts of the Green Marshes, Keiko Yamamoto, Robby Hide and Vicky the Raccoon all stumbled upon the overgrown ruins of a bygone war, and they were all surprised to see that a mated pair of small turkey-sized ornithopods had lovingly made themselves at home in the remains of what was once a mighty bomber. And Keiko quickly thought that the bellicose industrial civilizations that had long ruled the great, sprawling island-continent of Aetherosia for centuries will soon be succumbing to the forces of nature...

PREFACE

Derived from the previous posts on the 16^12 constructed universe, soon to append additional content derived from books I own... (Looking especially towards Mark Rosenfelder's works but got a bunch more useful ones that aren't of his hand)

Yet to refine a bunch of specific details to emulate, to avoid / differentiate, and correlating the whole mess with a bunch of additional sources, files and documents to reach a satisfactory conclusion to this article.

Some fundamental key parameters to remember

Reason: Worldbuilding for filling in the lore behind my art and also for manifestation purposes

Motivation: Mental health, wish-fulfillment, feelings of accomplishment, historical exploration, personal improvement at the craft, nuanced political advocacy?;

Genre: Alternate history / parallel universe, adventure/mystery, far future, medium magick / psionics users, adult audience (Millenials + Zillenials + Gen Z);

Scale: Planet (focus points, smallest scale?)

Mood: Noble [Grim to Noble agency scale], Neutral-Bright [Dark to Bright lively comfort scale]

Theme: Coming of Age [cycles of constructive renewal every so often] (storytelling motifs)

Conflict: Political intrigue, ethics of knowledge, addventure exploration, data processing, progress vs preservation, internal + external conflicts;

Workflow: From blob map to detailed flat map to GIS+OSM-enabled map

Name: Try using meaningful, nuanced or at least representative names

Magic: Yes it exists, but high technology and other meta-physical matters take priority and by far.

Timescale: From ~16 billion years after the big bang to the late iron stars age of the universe (mostly focused onto the later time periods)

Civilization 5 & its planetary geography: A classical terrestrial planet (144x72 hexagonal tiles -> 288x144 hexagonal tiles? -> 2880x1440p basemap), Got Lakes? map script (to be expanded onto later), 5 Billion Years, Normal temperate, Normal rainfall, High Sea level, Abundant resources, Globe World Wrap, Tectonic Plates Mountains, 'Tectonic and chains' Extras, Small Continents Landmasses, Evergreen & Crop Ice Age & Full Ice Age, Tilted Axis Crop & Tilted Axis Full & Two Suns, enraged barbarians, random personalities, new random seed, complete kills, randomize resources & goodies, (planet with its associated divine realms heavily intertwinned with the living's physical plane?)

Mainline sapient species: Humans (Traditional humans yet with several more sub-species & ancestries, such as Otterfolk, Bearfolk, Mothfolk, Elkfolk, Selkie, Sabertoothfolk, Salukifolk, Hyenafolk, Tigerfolk, Boarfolk, Karibufolk, Glyptodonfolk, [insert up to four additional Cenozoic-inspired sub-species here]…), Automaton (constructs, robots, droids, synthetics…), Izki (butterfly folk), Evandari (rodent folk), Urzo (jellyfish-like molluscoid), Akurites (individualistic sapient anthropods), Ganlarev (sapient fungoid species), DAAR Hive Awareness (Rogue Servitor divided / disparate service grids)

Sideline sapient species: Devils, Hellhounds, Mariliths, Imps, Daemons, Valkyrie, Sphinx-folk, Angels, Cherubs, Thrones, Seraphims, Devas & Devi & Asuras, Fairy, Sprites, Dryads, Nymphs, Skinwalkers…

2D Ethos: [ Transparency - Mystery, Instrument - Agency; ] scales Threeway Ethical "Ancestral" Lineages: [ Harmony - Liberty - Progress; ] scale

Stellaris parameters: 4x Habitable worlds, 3x primitive civilizations, 4500s as contemporary present day, 4800s as Stellaris starting point, 5200 early game start, 5600 mid-game, 6000 late game, 6400 endgame / victory, all crisis types, tweaks to Stellaris' Nemesis system for extremely long-term lore (Neue Pangea Sol-3, Dying Sol-3, Undead Sol-3, Red Dwarves, Black Holes, Iron Stars, Heat Death;)…

FreeCiv parameters: [?]

SimCity 4 parameters: [?]

Life Simulation 'toybox' parameters: [?]

CRPG parameters: [?]

Computer mini-FS: [?]

Immersion and reality shifting feelies: [?]

Atlas parameters: [?]

[...]

CIVILIZATIONS

(12 majors, 32-48 minors, but it is a fairly flexible system as to leave room for many game scenarios and variations)

(Civ_1 to Civ_12) Shoshones (as the eponymous Shoshoni, also somewhat similar to the Western US of A + Cascadia + British Colombia to be frank), Maya (as the Atepec), Morocco (as the Tatari), Celts < Scotland < Gaelic Picts (as the Aberku), Brazil (as the March+Burgund+Hugues cultural co-federated group), Persia (as the Taliyan), Poland (as the Rzhev), Incas (as the Palche), Assyria (as the Syriac), Babylon (as the Ishtar), Polynesia < Samoa (as the Sama),

(Civ_13 to Civ_16) Korea (as the Hwatcha), Sweden (as the Mersuit), Japan ≈ Austria < Portugal (as the Arela), China ≈ Siam < Vietnam (as the Cao),

(Civ_17 to Civ_20) Indonesia < Inuit (as the Eqalen), Carthage (as the Eyn), Mongols < Angola (as the Temu), Netherlands (as the Treano);

(Civ_21 to Civ_36) Hungary (as the Uralic & Caucasus peoples, including Avars & Hungarians) Aremorica (as a different, more inner continental Gaulish Breton [or Turkey's Galatians], flavor of Aberku druidic Celts, from which the Angora names derives from) Sumer (some additional mesopotamian civilization into the mixture) Burgundy (as a releasable Occitan cultural state from Brazil) Lithuania (as the Chunhau cantonese seafarers) Carib (Classical Nahuatl / Nubian civilization of darkest skin cultures, integral part of a major human labor market before it got shutdown) Austria (as a releasable March cultural state from Brazil with some exiled cities) England (as a releasable Hugues cultural state from Brazil) Spain ≈ Castille ≈ Aragon (as the Medran) Nippur ≈ Nibru ≈ Elam (as another, east-ward mesopotamian state) Myceneans < Minoans (as a seafarers aggressive culture) Ethiopia < Kilwa ≈ Oman (as a Ibadi Islam outspot of trade) Venice < Tuscany (as another Treano state) Byzantium ≈ Classical Greece (as the pious religious orthodox Zapata government akin to tsarist Russia dynasty & Vatican Papal States during the late 18th century) Ottomans < Turks (as the Turchian turkic culture group) Hittites (as the Hatris / Lydians culture group)

CULTURES

(Ranges from ~36 to 48 total)

Eyn = Levantine

Ibrad = Hungarian

Zebie = Basque

Tatari = Berber

Cao = Vietnamese

Shoshoni

Turchian = Turkish

Eqalen = Inuit

Tersun = Ruthenian

Temu = Nigerian

Hugues = English

Lueur = Mongolian

March = German

Teotlan = Nahuatl

Hwatcha = Korean

Ishtar = Mesopotamian

Taliyan = Iranian

Palche = Quechua

Aberku = Celtic

Sama = Polynesian

Medran = Castillian

Burgund = French

Bantnani = Karnataka

Syriac = Mesopotamian

Atepec = Mayan

Rzhev = Ruthenian

Matwa = Swahili

Hangzhou = Chinese

Chunhau = Cantonese

Mersuit = Inuit

Treano = Italian

Arela = Portuguese

Hatris = Hittites / Lydians

Zapata = Byzantines / Mycenean Greeks

Nippir = Elam / Far-Eastern Mesopotamia

Irena = Minoan Greeks

STATES

(most likely much more than 96, and not yet decided either)

RELIGIONS

(~24 majors, 48 minors...)

Pohakantenna renamed as Utchwe (Shoshoni pantheon)

Confucianism tradition (and Shinto...)

Al-Asnam (Celtic druidic pantheon)

Ba'hai (monotheistic non-exclusive syncretism)

Arianism (iterated from the defunct Christianity dialect)

Chaldeanism (Mesopotamian pantheon)

Calvinism (derived from the Protestant Reformation's Huguenot Southern French, monotheism)

Tala-e-Fonua (Samoan pantheon)

Hussitism (central slavic dialect of monotheism)

Jainism (communal humility & individualized ki monks culture)

Buddhism tradition (inner way reincarnation & large monasteries)

Judaism

Zoroastrianism

Ibadiyya (Islam)

Shia (Islam)

Canaanism (Carthaginian belief system)

Pesedjet (Numidan Hieroglyphics belief system)

Mwari (Carib religion)

Inti pantheon

Mayan pantheon

Political Ideologies

Harmony (right-wing preservationist / "conservative" party, with very limited Wilsonism involved due to historical failings, so like a mixture of Democrats and Republicans as a Unionist Party)

Progress (think of the Theodore Roosevelt progressives party...)

Liberty (political center party)

Syndicalism (alternate development & continuation of IRL marxism, leninism, maoism, trotskyist "new-left" and the other left-wing doctrines of the socialism / communism types)

Georgism / ( "One Tax" + Ecological movement )

Classical Liberalism (aka open-choice Libertarians with brutal constructivist modular views of the world perhaps?)

Philosophies

[ Yet to be really researched and decided ]

Historical equivalences & differences

Mersuit emulating the history of Sweden.

Shoshoni as something somewhat similar to a developed amerindian old westerns' United States of America...

Widespread appeal of Asetism (Monasteries, humility and introspection, likewise to Jains and Buddhists) & Taizhou (Tala-e-Fonua equivalent) as key major worldly religions

No Woodrow Wilson, progressive major successes in the 1910-1945 equivalent.

More long-term sustainable and successful generational pathway in the 1960s-2000 period, still leading to a slow partial ecological collapse like in the Incatena reality just about around the mid 2045-2050 period with signs of decay arising from the 2020s. So the sapient peoples are more cooperative and empowered with the people that era and won't see as much of the managerial crisis sparks until the mid-2020s.

The global pandemic hit during the early 2000s alongside the dawn of ecological issues coming ahead (giving a slight headstart to fully figure problems coming not that far ahead), just around the time of nanotech synthetic autonomous androids emergence and a handful of alternatively successful technical progressions making them a slight bit ahead of ours on a couple fields. No mainstream autonomous governance AI service grids or really crazy Sci-fi innovations just yet, but a fair share of orphaned developments we did not have continue in this world.

A couple of benevolent worker cooperatives like Pflaumen (DEC+ZuseKG), EBM (IBM+ICL) & Utalics (Symbolics+Commodore+GNU Foundation)... continue well into the 21st century and persist as major computation players in the tech industry, averting the immediate rise of Macroware (Microsoft), Avant (Google) & Maynote (Meta) by the ill-conceived social medium strategy.

[ More to be written... ]

POSTFACE

A great way to flesh out any constructed language is by doing translations of random pieces of text. It’s good to think of how *your* conlang does certain constructions or expresses certain things--not all languages use the same grammatical constructions to express the same ideas.  Here are some examples of practice translations in Rílin, including interlinearizations with orthography, romanization, IPA, morpheme breakdown, and free translation.

Here is a bit of a longer one, with multiple clauses of different types. Note that “worry” as a verb in Rílin is more complex: “be wesadipinky täñset séla” = literally, “that we may/should not hold worry with this”. 

I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that the Theonite series is well worth your time! I’m super excited for the story to continue, and now I can finally feel comfortable reading the The Sword of Kaigen story that’s been coming in my emails since June! :D