shijing
The Living Force
Re: Cassiopaean's Names in Sessions
So I do have something to say now that I have had some time to analyze the names of the C's. I don't think I have seen everything there is to see yet, but the system that the names are built on is pretty systematic, with a few exceptions that I will note at the end of this post. As an initial caveat, I want to remind everyone of this recent quote from the C's that Anart mentioned earlier today:
So remember, the C's seem to be providing names at every session as a kind of courtesy to Laura et al (and probably the rest of us as well, indirectly). There is no reason to believe that the names are 'real' in the sense that they belong to 'individual' Cassiopaeans, and we have no idea where they get the names from -- for all we know, they just make them up on the spot. Regardless, as I said, their choice of names does seem to have some kind of order behind it, and that's what I'm going to explore now.
Note that there is only one name that is recognizable in English: Poinsettia (Corsoca is mentioned as a name taken from a piece of literature: see Luthien's post below). Another word, Fortunaea, seems like it could be a possible name, although it isn't actually as far as I can tell.
(Also, quick note to SAO -- I haven't had a chance to try _http://textalyser.net/ yet because I wanted to get the initial analysis up tonight, but I am going to play with it in the next couple of days and see what I can figure out -- thanks for the site address).
I am going to go through the Cassiopaean names in kind of the same way that I did the planet names a couple days ago -- I'll try to be thorough, but not get so technical that it becomes boring. Questions and comments always welcome.
Phonology
In analyzing the sounds from which the names are constructed, I am keeping in mind that they are being spelled out over a spirit board, which means there is a restriction to the 26 letters of the English alphabet -- that means that if there is a sound that be signified by a single letter from the English orthography, it will have to be spelled out using a digraph (a combination of two letters). Otherwise, I make a blind assumption that the letters used by the C's correspond closely to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). And speaking of which, if you are curious you might want to take a look at the following link to an interactive IPA chart for comparison with what I lay out below -- its fun in its own right:
_http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html
Consonants
The following is the chart of consonants used in the names. Any consonant that occurs only once, I place in parentheses:
p t c k (q)
pp tt (cc) (kk)
ph th kh
b d j g
gg
(tz)
f s (sh) x h
(ff) xx hh
v z
(zz)
m n
mm nn
hm hn
l
ll
w r y
rr
hr
There are a few interesting things about this consonant inventory. One is the fact that there are pervasive geminates, which are consonants that are held for a duration that is nearly twice as long as long as their short counterparts (so, for example [pp] would be held about twice as long as [p]). Geminates are usually related to word stress, and almost always occur in the middles of words, which is true here.
Another interesting fact is that there are voiceless sonorants [hm, hn, hr] which from an English point-of-view are very exotic.
There are two phonemes which are conspicuously absent -- one is the velar nasal, which is spelled /ng/ in English -- it never occurs once, so it seems safe to say that the C's don't use it. The other is voiceless [hl], which would be expected to occur if there is also voiceless [hm, hn, hr].
Phonotactics
Consonant clusters are pretty normal from the standpoint of English. It is however interesting to notice the occurrence of one more 'exotic' consonant cluster, [xy], as in the following names (the phoneme x is a sound many English-speakers associate with German or Scottish -- its the same sound you probably make during E-E when you breathe out during pipe-breathing):
Xyorra
Xyenri
Vinxyoh
Vowels
The following is the chart of vowels:
i y u
ii
e o
ee oo
a
aa
This is a six-vowel inventory which is pretty normal typologically except for the [y], which is a vowel written in European languages as /u/ with an umlaut (two dots above it), and it sounds like the vowel i except you round your lips. Vocalic /y/ has to be distinguished from consonantal /y/ based on its position in the word. This shows up in the following names:
Yxorra
Yxtorra
Yzgorra
Sycoritia
Lynostieah
Yloloh
The one other interesting feature of the vowel inventory is vowel-length. As with geminate consonants, a long vowel is about twice as long as a short vowel. There is one gap in the system above: an absence of long [uu] and [yy] (these are both of fairly low frequency to begin with).
Prosody
It is difficult to infer much about the prosody (which is how stress is assigned and how words are divided into syllables), with one possible exception. It is clear that the C's love vowels, and aren't afraid to parse several of them in a row, for example:
Teiurannea
Yeaionnia
Ohellieae
Xiooira
Languages of this sort usually have a timing system described as 'moraic' (the best-known moraic language is probably Japanese). What this means is that every vowel gets an equal count, and so the first name above would be divided into syllables like this:
Te.i.u.ran.ne.a
Morphology
As has already been observed, the C's have a propensity for certain endings on their names, the most common of which is /-a/ (Anart already mentioned a subtype of this, /-aea/). Cassioapaean names have a strong tendency to end in vowels (there are obviously exceptions), and there are a few of these endings that occur often enough that it is likely they represent some sort of suffix which occurs commonly in name formation. By far the most frequent is /-a/, and I list examples below with the suffix segmented (note: please excuse some of the very long name lists below -- I had severe alignment issues, and will try to get it fixed later if I can figure out how):
Wonnap-a
Wisom-a
Maranatt-a
Vort-a
Corsoc-a
Sorron-a
Loxacc-a
Koork-a
Soroc-a
Yon-a
Jozz-a
Enduand-a
Lopsiatz-a
Jemmon-a
Daohh-a
Eommn-a
Dedeb-a
Tir-a
Nomihh-a
Uru-a
Vedeeb-a
Vir-a
Wasann-a
Oppono-a
Ellag-a
Xor-a
Nilionn-a
Lio-a
Batuv-a
Tor-a
Winyonn-a
Hifa-a
Anoov-a
Ior-a
Kionn-a
Lorskva-a
Honaz-a
Rolor-a
Roll-a
Wamph-a
Gorror-a
Jopall-a
Lourith-a
Eggedor-a
Groill-a
Wonikh-a
Sorrillor-a
Leijoo-a
Emorrih-a
Pamthor-a
Azah-a
Xiooir-a
Shour-a
Noniger-a
Bayreer-a
Since /-a/ occurs very frequently after /-rr-/, I had originally considered /-rra/ a separate suffix, but this is probably not correct because (1) [rr] is very frequent in general and (2) to segment it this way would leave many of the roots very short (only CV), so I now consider this to be part of the above category (a name with a (2) after it means it occurs twice in the transcripts):
Sorr-a (2)
Xyorr-a
Cederr-a
Honnorr-a
Torr-a (2)
Yxorr-a
Donarr-a
Jimmorr-a
Vorr-a
Yxtorr-a
Decorr-a
Nuthurr-a
Vurr-a
Yzgorr-a
Lomarr-a
Urturr-a
Lorr-a
Alorr-a
Lomorr-a
Kiolorr-a
Marr-a
Olorr-a
Lororr-a
Vostorr-a
Hnorr-a
Hidorr-a
A similar suffix is /-ia/:
Sycorit-ia
Poinsett-ia
Astas-ia
Yeaionn-ia
Wikij-ia
Lorienn-ia
Olonnag-ia
Gioll-ia
Riv-ia
Sorr-ia
Wokuh-ia
Larr-ia
Prom-ia
Tomorr-ia
Kolon-ia
Ixthorr-ia
Poron-ia
Gronnio-ia
Calon-ia
Kourn-ia
Hiperion-ia
Onoko-ia
Poinon-ia
Elmino-ia
Biomin-ia
Orothe-ia
Fiil-ia
Toyji-ia
Tiklor-ia
Koroi-ia
Tor-ia
Olimp-ia
Another is /-ea/ (or, since there are fewer of these, its possible that the correct analysis is /e-a/):
Rolig-ea (or Rolige-a)
Romomm-ea (or Romomme-a)
Ropponi-ea (or Ropponie-a)
Zan-ea (or Zane-a)
Teiurann-ea (or Teiuranne-a)
Haili-ea (or Hailie-a)
Porson-ea (or Porsone-a)
Fonorr-ea (or Fonorre-a)
Lori-ea (or Lorie-a)
Bader-ea (or Badere-a)
Opl-ea (or Ople-a)
Wonni-ea (or Wonnie-a)
Wosarri-ea (or Wosarrie-a)
And a variant of this is /-a-ea/ (a la Cassiopaea). Or, based on the names Ammiliwae and Ohellieae, these could alternatively be segmented as /ae-a/:
Fortun-a-ea (or Fortunae-a)
Giff-a-ea (or Giffae-a)
Sonori-a-ea (or Sonoriae-a)
Sikelor-a-ea (or Sikelorae-a)
Roll-a-ea (or Rollae-a)
Riahonoi-a-ea (or Riahonoiae-a)
Kilo-a-ea (or Kiloae-a)
Gurs-a-ea (or Gursae-a)
Figli-a-ea (or Figliae-a)
Leahri-a-ea (or Leahriae-a)
There are several names that end with [h], but only those with /-ah/ endings are statistically common enough to be analyzed with a suffix:
Kinnem-ah
Timm-ah
Zon-ah
Laopinn-ah
Zollan-ah
Zall-ah
Rommol-ah
Kroll-ah
Honnor-ah
Feorrall-ah
Nimommar-ah
Ponoll-ah
Verri-ah
Jarr-ah
Ekoki-ah
Morr-ah
Sori-ah
Uturr-ah
Lynostie-ah
Uthurr-ah
Yort-ah
Higurr-ah
Mohn-ah
Rinirr-ah
Piliann-ah
Siann-ah
Mann-ah
Exceptions
There are a handful of names that seem odd (sometimes really odd) for one reason or another, and I'll briefly list these below.
First, there are a couple of words with what are called syllabic sonorants, where a sound that usually acts as a consonant occupies the place in the word normally reserved for vowels:
Mahijm
Rindr
This is true of the final [m] in the first word and the final [r] in the second. This is not as unusual as it looks -- it actually happens in English (it just isn't written that way), although some languages do encode this in the orthography -- one example is Heimdallr (where the final [r] is a syllabic [r]). More extreme examples of this are the following two names (geminate [ll] in both cases, and [n] additionally in the second one):
Sijll
znsllsos
The following ending [-hk] is not impossible, but pretty marked:
Torrillahk
Its also unusual to have a voiced sonorant [r] clustering with a voiceless sonorant [hn]:
Klorhn
Geminates also don't normally occur in word-final position:
Aldronn
Votorr
And speaking of geminates, they don't usually participate in consonant clusters:
Viaggmor
Eommna
Fogorrh
Njorrg
Both of these rules are violated in the place name 'Neormm' mentioned in session 4/29/95:
Neormm
The initial cluster in the last name above ([nj]) is rather marked, and the one in the following name ([jx]) is just kind of weird:
Jxoin
And finally, there is the infamous vowel-less name which Oxajil mentioned:
Xtqf
This one was so strange, I actually looked the session up, and discovered that it was the session where Terry and Jan had returned after a long hiatus and everything in the first part was screwy, so this particular name is probably not representative of the kind of name that our vowel-loving C's would usually choose.
Edited: vowel section (included the vowel [y]); added more examples of 'exceptions'; reanalyzed /-rra/ and gave alternatives for /-ea/ and /-a-ea/
So I do have something to say now that I have had some time to analyze the names of the C's. I don't think I have seen everything there is to see yet, but the system that the names are built on is pretty systematic, with a few exceptions that I will note at the end of this post. As an initial caveat, I want to remind everyone of this recent quote from the C's that Anart mentioned earlier today:
So remember, the C's seem to be providing names at every session as a kind of courtesy to Laura et al (and probably the rest of us as well, indirectly). There is no reason to believe that the names are 'real' in the sense that they belong to 'individual' Cassiopaeans, and we have no idea where they get the names from -- for all we know, they just make them up on the spot. Regardless, as I said, their choice of names does seem to have some kind of order behind it, and that's what I'm going to explore now.
Note that there is only one name that is recognizable in English: Poinsettia (Corsoca is mentioned as a name taken from a piece of literature: see Luthien's post below). Another word, Fortunaea, seems like it could be a possible name, although it isn't actually as far as I can tell.
(Also, quick note to SAO -- I haven't had a chance to try _http://textalyser.net/ yet because I wanted to get the initial analysis up tonight, but I am going to play with it in the next couple of days and see what I can figure out -- thanks for the site address).
I am going to go through the Cassiopaean names in kind of the same way that I did the planet names a couple days ago -- I'll try to be thorough, but not get so technical that it becomes boring. Questions and comments always welcome.
Phonology
In analyzing the sounds from which the names are constructed, I am keeping in mind that they are being spelled out over a spirit board, which means there is a restriction to the 26 letters of the English alphabet -- that means that if there is a sound that be signified by a single letter from the English orthography, it will have to be spelled out using a digraph (a combination of two letters). Otherwise, I make a blind assumption that the letters used by the C's correspond closely to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). And speaking of which, if you are curious you might want to take a look at the following link to an interactive IPA chart for comparison with what I lay out below -- its fun in its own right:
_http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html
Consonants
The following is the chart of consonants used in the names. Any consonant that occurs only once, I place in parentheses:
p t c k (q)
pp tt (cc) (kk)
ph th kh
b d j g
gg
(tz)
f s (sh) x h
(ff) xx hh
v z
(zz)
m n
mm nn
hm hn
l
ll
w r y
rr
hr
There are a few interesting things about this consonant inventory. One is the fact that there are pervasive geminates, which are consonants that are held for a duration that is nearly twice as long as long as their short counterparts (so, for example [pp] would be held about twice as long as [p]). Geminates are usually related to word stress, and almost always occur in the middles of words, which is true here.
Another interesting fact is that there are voiceless sonorants [hm, hn, hr] which from an English point-of-view are very exotic.
There are two phonemes which are conspicuously absent -- one is the velar nasal, which is spelled /ng/ in English -- it never occurs once, so it seems safe to say that the C's don't use it. The other is voiceless [hl], which would be expected to occur if there is also voiceless [hm, hn, hr].
Phonotactics
Consonant clusters are pretty normal from the standpoint of English. It is however interesting to notice the occurrence of one more 'exotic' consonant cluster, [xy], as in the following names (the phoneme x is a sound many English-speakers associate with German or Scottish -- its the same sound you probably make during E-E when you breathe out during pipe-breathing):
Xyorra
Xyenri
Vinxyoh
Vowels
The following is the chart of vowels:
i y u
ii
e o
ee oo
a
aa
This is a six-vowel inventory which is pretty normal typologically except for the [y], which is a vowel written in European languages as /u/ with an umlaut (two dots above it), and it sounds like the vowel i except you round your lips. Vocalic /y/ has to be distinguished from consonantal /y/ based on its position in the word. This shows up in the following names:
Yxorra
Yxtorra
Yzgorra
Sycoritia
Lynostieah
Yloloh
The one other interesting feature of the vowel inventory is vowel-length. As with geminate consonants, a long vowel is about twice as long as a short vowel. There is one gap in the system above: an absence of long [uu] and [yy] (these are both of fairly low frequency to begin with).
Prosody
It is difficult to infer much about the prosody (which is how stress is assigned and how words are divided into syllables), with one possible exception. It is clear that the C's love vowels, and aren't afraid to parse several of them in a row, for example:
Teiurannea
Yeaionnia
Ohellieae
Xiooira
Languages of this sort usually have a timing system described as 'moraic' (the best-known moraic language is probably Japanese). What this means is that every vowel gets an equal count, and so the first name above would be divided into syllables like this:
Te.i.u.ran.ne.a
Morphology
As has already been observed, the C's have a propensity for certain endings on their names, the most common of which is /-a/ (Anart already mentioned a subtype of this, /-aea/). Cassioapaean names have a strong tendency to end in vowels (there are obviously exceptions), and there are a few of these endings that occur often enough that it is likely they represent some sort of suffix which occurs commonly in name formation. By far the most frequent is /-a/, and I list examples below with the suffix segmented (note: please excuse some of the very long name lists below -- I had severe alignment issues, and will try to get it fixed later if I can figure out how):
Wonnap-a
Wisom-a
Maranatt-a
Vort-a
Corsoc-a
Sorron-a
Loxacc-a
Koork-a
Soroc-a
Yon-a
Jozz-a
Enduand-a
Lopsiatz-a
Jemmon-a
Daohh-a
Eommn-a
Dedeb-a
Tir-a
Nomihh-a
Uru-a
Vedeeb-a
Vir-a
Wasann-a
Oppono-a
Ellag-a
Xor-a
Nilionn-a
Lio-a
Batuv-a
Tor-a
Winyonn-a
Hifa-a
Anoov-a
Ior-a
Kionn-a
Lorskva-a
Honaz-a
Rolor-a
Roll-a
Wamph-a
Gorror-a
Jopall-a
Lourith-a
Eggedor-a
Groill-a
Wonikh-a
Sorrillor-a
Leijoo-a
Emorrih-a
Pamthor-a
Azah-a
Xiooir-a
Shour-a
Noniger-a
Bayreer-a
Since /-a/ occurs very frequently after /-rr-/, I had originally considered /-rra/ a separate suffix, but this is probably not correct because (1) [rr] is very frequent in general and (2) to segment it this way would leave many of the roots very short (only CV), so I now consider this to be part of the above category (a name with a (2) after it means it occurs twice in the transcripts):
Sorr-a (2)
Xyorr-a
Cederr-a
Honnorr-a
Torr-a (2)
Yxorr-a
Donarr-a
Jimmorr-a
Vorr-a
Yxtorr-a
Decorr-a
Nuthurr-a
Vurr-a
Yzgorr-a
Lomarr-a
Urturr-a
Lorr-a
Alorr-a
Lomorr-a
Kiolorr-a
Marr-a
Olorr-a
Lororr-a
Vostorr-a
Hnorr-a
Hidorr-a
A similar suffix is /-ia/:
Sycorit-ia
Poinsett-ia
Astas-ia
Yeaionn-ia
Wikij-ia
Lorienn-ia
Olonnag-ia
Gioll-ia
Riv-ia
Sorr-ia
Wokuh-ia
Larr-ia
Prom-ia
Tomorr-ia
Kolon-ia
Ixthorr-ia
Poron-ia
Gronnio-ia
Calon-ia
Kourn-ia
Hiperion-ia
Onoko-ia
Poinon-ia
Elmino-ia
Biomin-ia
Orothe-ia
Fiil-ia
Toyji-ia
Tiklor-ia
Koroi-ia
Tor-ia
Olimp-ia
Another is /-ea/ (or, since there are fewer of these, its possible that the correct analysis is /e-a/):
Rolig-ea (or Rolige-a)
Romomm-ea (or Romomme-a)
Ropponi-ea (or Ropponie-a)
Zan-ea (or Zane-a)
Teiurann-ea (or Teiuranne-a)
Haili-ea (or Hailie-a)
Porson-ea (or Porsone-a)
Fonorr-ea (or Fonorre-a)
Lori-ea (or Lorie-a)
Bader-ea (or Badere-a)
Opl-ea (or Ople-a)
Wonni-ea (or Wonnie-a)
Wosarri-ea (or Wosarrie-a)
And a variant of this is /-a-ea/ (a la Cassiopaea). Or, based on the names Ammiliwae and Ohellieae, these could alternatively be segmented as /ae-a/:
Fortun-a-ea (or Fortunae-a)
Giff-a-ea (or Giffae-a)
Sonori-a-ea (or Sonoriae-a)
Sikelor-a-ea (or Sikelorae-a)
Roll-a-ea (or Rollae-a)
Riahonoi-a-ea (or Riahonoiae-a)
Kilo-a-ea (or Kiloae-a)
Gurs-a-ea (or Gursae-a)
Figli-a-ea (or Figliae-a)
Leahri-a-ea (or Leahriae-a)
There are several names that end with [h], but only those with /-ah/ endings are statistically common enough to be analyzed with a suffix:
Kinnem-ah
Timm-ah
Zon-ah
Laopinn-ah
Zollan-ah
Zall-ah
Rommol-ah
Kroll-ah
Honnor-ah
Feorrall-ah
Nimommar-ah
Ponoll-ah
Verri-ah
Jarr-ah
Ekoki-ah
Morr-ah
Sori-ah
Uturr-ah
Lynostie-ah
Uthurr-ah
Yort-ah
Higurr-ah
Mohn-ah
Rinirr-ah
Piliann-ah
Siann-ah
Mann-ah
Exceptions
There are a handful of names that seem odd (sometimes really odd) for one reason or another, and I'll briefly list these below.
First, there are a couple of words with what are called syllabic sonorants, where a sound that usually acts as a consonant occupies the place in the word normally reserved for vowels:
Mahijm
Rindr
This is true of the final [m] in the first word and the final [r] in the second. This is not as unusual as it looks -- it actually happens in English (it just isn't written that way), although some languages do encode this in the orthography -- one example is Heimdallr (where the final [r] is a syllabic [r]). More extreme examples of this are the following two names (geminate [ll] in both cases, and [n] additionally in the second one):
Sijll
znsllsos
The following ending [-hk] is not impossible, but pretty marked:
Torrillahk
Its also unusual to have a voiced sonorant [r] clustering with a voiceless sonorant [hn]:
Klorhn
Geminates also don't normally occur in word-final position:
Aldronn
Votorr
And speaking of geminates, they don't usually participate in consonant clusters:
Viaggmor
Eommna
Fogorrh
Njorrg
Both of these rules are violated in the place name 'Neormm' mentioned in session 4/29/95:
Neormm
The initial cluster in the last name above ([nj]) is rather marked, and the one in the following name ([jx]) is just kind of weird:
Jxoin
And finally, there is the infamous vowel-less name which Oxajil mentioned:
Xtqf
This one was so strange, I actually looked the session up, and discovered that it was the session where Terry and Jan had returned after a long hiatus and everything in the first part was screwy, so this particular name is probably not representative of the kind of name that our vowel-loving C's would usually choose.
Edited: vowel section (included the vowel [y]); added more examples of 'exceptions'; reanalyzed /-rra/ and gave alternatives for /-ea/ and /-a-ea/
