shijing
The Living Force
I have wondered, more than once, about the information given below on the planets of the solar system from session 9/30/94 (sorry that the alignment is really bad -- I had a hard time with that):
For the planets we have data on, the information seems to be good in terms of distance from sun and diameter. What I really wondered about were the names that were given the twelve planets. I checked, and they aren't Sumerian or Babylonian. Since the name 'Zendar' (Saturn) has been used both here and in the Ra literature (and only there as far as I can tell, at least originally), I wonder if the language is extra-Terran. Maybe Kantekkian or 'Orion'? This being the case, I thought it would be fun to do an analysis of the kind that a linguist would do when finding any written fragment of an extinct language where there is no context in which to place it, where all that is available to use is the language-internal data and typological inference based on the way we know other languages work. The following is what I came up with (there are occasionally some technical linguistic terms, which you can probably do a Google search for but you can also ask about here if you would like -- I try to explain them briefly when they come up):
Phonology
Phoneme Inventory
Consonants Vowels
p t c k i u
b d j e o
s a
v z
m n
l
r y
There are undoubtedly gaps in the consonant inventory above, given the fact that there are only twelve lexical samples. That being said, from a typological perspective, the phoneme inventory is pretty unremarkable. There are four places of articulation for consonants, a voicing contrast in obstruents (stops and fricatives), and a distinction in the liquids between [l] and [r]. There is a five-vowel system (similar to Spanish or Japanese) which is very common, with three levels of height and backness.
Phonotactics
There is a narrow range of consonant clusters which appear to be allowed word-internally:
nt
nd
rc
These are all homorganic sequences, which means that they involve the same articulator (in this case the tip of the tongue). Nasal-obstruent sequences like [nt] and [nd] are particularly unmarked. Based on the small sample we have, we can make a tentative assumption that there is a constraint against non-homorganic sequences (so there are no examples of, i.e. [mt], [np] or [mk]).
Metrical structure
Languages usually assign their rules of where to place stress based on something called a 'foot'. Feet are made up of a sequence of two syllables, and a word will normally be parsed into as many feet as possible, with extra syllables left unparsed in a word with an odd number of syllables. Since we can't hear these planet names pronounced, we have to make a guess about how the feet are aligned, and the default typologically is that the first foot is aligned with one edge of the word, the next foot with the other edge, and then if the word is long enough additional feet will be parsed in the middle. Feet are indicated below with square brackets.
There are two types of feet: 'trochaic', where the stress is placed on the first of the two syllables, and 'iambic', where it is placed on the second of the two syllables. There does not appear to be evidence for iambic feet (geminate consonants or long vowels), so I am making the assumption that the feet are trochaic. Having decided that, the planet names can be parsed in the following way, where a '.' indicates a syllable boundary and bolding indicates that the syllable is stressed (secondary stress is shown with italics in the final word):
[Sa.ras]
[Ma.sar]
[Yon.tar]
[Zen.dar]
[Ji.no]ar (or Ji[no.ar])
[Pe.mun]tar (or Pe[mun.tar])
[Mon.to][na.nas]
[O.pa][ta.nar]
[Lo.no][po.nor]
[Su.vu]ru[tar.car]
[Bi.ka]la[ma.nar]
[O.pi][ki.ma][na.ras]
Morphology
Finally, based on the similarities that recur at the ends of the planet names, it can be inferred that the names are built using suffixes (and that this language therefore has suffixes). There seem to be two kinds of suffixes -- the first is /-as/:
Sar-as
Montonan-as
The second suffix is /-ar/:
Jino-ar
Mas-ar
Zend-ar
Yont-ar
Opatan-ar
Lonopon-or
Bikalaman-ar
Pemunt-ar
Suvurutarc-ar
Finally, the length of this name may indicate that it is double-suffixed:
Opikiman-ar-as
(Note: the suffix vowel in the name Lonoponor may be /o/ instead of /a/ because of something called vowel harmony, a phenomenon in which an affix vowel has to agree in some feature with the preceding root vowel. This may not occur in the name Yontar because vowel harmony is blocked by a consonant cluster, and it may not occur in Jinoar because of a rule against vowel assimilation -- this is all very speculative given the paucity of data.)
It is impossible to say with any certainty what kind of suffixes /-as/ and /-ar/ were, but since these are names for nouns (i.e. planets), one possibility is that they were nominalizers, or suffixes which convert another part of speech (such as a verb or an adjective) into a noun. An example in English is the suffix /-er/, which converts a verb into a noun: help > helper, burn > burner, and so forth. If this assumption is correct, then this means that the roots of the planet names (the main part without the suffix) may be verbs or adjectives.
I know parts of this are a bit technical if you don't have a linguistics background, but I hope it will still be interesting to read and fun to think about.
Q: (L) How many planets are in our solar system?
A: 12
Q: (L) Could you tell us the names of all the planets, their distances from the sun, the chemical composition, and the diameter.
A:
Planet Distance from Sun Diameter Chemical Composition
Mercury=Opatanar 36 million miles from Sun 3000 mi dia.
Venus=Pemuntar 67 million miles from Sun 7,500 mi. dia.
Earth=Saras 93 million miles from Sun 7,900 mi. dia.
Mars=Masar 141,500,000 miles from Sun 4,200 mi. dia.
Jupiter=Yontar 483,400,000 miles from Sun 88,700 mi. dia.
Saturn=Zendar 886,700,000 miles from Sun 74,500 mi. dia.
Uranus=Lonoponor 1,782,700,000 miles from Sun 31,566 mi. dia.
Neptune=Jinoar 2,794,300,000 miles from Sun 30,199 mi. dia.
Pluto=Opikimanaras 3,666,100,000 miles from Sun 1,864 mi. dia.
NI=Montonanas 570,000,000,000 miles from Sun 7,000 mi. dia. solid matter
NII=Suvurutarcar 830,000,000,000 miles from Sun 18,000 mi. dia. hydrogen, ammonia
NIII=Bikalamanar 1,600,000,000,000 miles from Sun 46,000 mi. dia. hydrogen, ammonia
For the planets we have data on, the information seems to be good in terms of distance from sun and diameter. What I really wondered about were the names that were given the twelve planets. I checked, and they aren't Sumerian or Babylonian. Since the name 'Zendar' (Saturn) has been used both here and in the Ra literature (and only there as far as I can tell, at least originally), I wonder if the language is extra-Terran. Maybe Kantekkian or 'Orion'? This being the case, I thought it would be fun to do an analysis of the kind that a linguist would do when finding any written fragment of an extinct language where there is no context in which to place it, where all that is available to use is the language-internal data and typological inference based on the way we know other languages work. The following is what I came up with (there are occasionally some technical linguistic terms, which you can probably do a Google search for but you can also ask about here if you would like -- I try to explain them briefly when they come up):
Phonology
Phoneme Inventory
Consonants Vowels
p t c k i u
b d j e o
s a
v z
m n
l
r y
There are undoubtedly gaps in the consonant inventory above, given the fact that there are only twelve lexical samples. That being said, from a typological perspective, the phoneme inventory is pretty unremarkable. There are four places of articulation for consonants, a voicing contrast in obstruents (stops and fricatives), and a distinction in the liquids between [l] and [r]. There is a five-vowel system (similar to Spanish or Japanese) which is very common, with three levels of height and backness.
Phonotactics
There is a narrow range of consonant clusters which appear to be allowed word-internally:
nt
nd
rc
These are all homorganic sequences, which means that they involve the same articulator (in this case the tip of the tongue). Nasal-obstruent sequences like [nt] and [nd] are particularly unmarked. Based on the small sample we have, we can make a tentative assumption that there is a constraint against non-homorganic sequences (so there are no examples of, i.e. [mt], [np] or [mk]).
Metrical structure
Languages usually assign their rules of where to place stress based on something called a 'foot'. Feet are made up of a sequence of two syllables, and a word will normally be parsed into as many feet as possible, with extra syllables left unparsed in a word with an odd number of syllables. Since we can't hear these planet names pronounced, we have to make a guess about how the feet are aligned, and the default typologically is that the first foot is aligned with one edge of the word, the next foot with the other edge, and then if the word is long enough additional feet will be parsed in the middle. Feet are indicated below with square brackets.
There are two types of feet: 'trochaic', where the stress is placed on the first of the two syllables, and 'iambic', where it is placed on the second of the two syllables. There does not appear to be evidence for iambic feet (geminate consonants or long vowels), so I am making the assumption that the feet are trochaic. Having decided that, the planet names can be parsed in the following way, where a '.' indicates a syllable boundary and bolding indicates that the syllable is stressed (secondary stress is shown with italics in the final word):
[Sa.ras]
[Ma.sar]
[Yon.tar]
[Zen.dar]
[Ji.no]ar (or Ji[no.ar])
[Pe.mun]tar (or Pe[mun.tar])
[Mon.to][na.nas]
[O.pa][ta.nar]
[Lo.no][po.nor]
[Su.vu]ru[tar.car]
[Bi.ka]la[ma.nar]
[O.pi][ki.ma][na.ras]
Morphology
Finally, based on the similarities that recur at the ends of the planet names, it can be inferred that the names are built using suffixes (and that this language therefore has suffixes). There seem to be two kinds of suffixes -- the first is /-as/:
Sar-as
Montonan-as
The second suffix is /-ar/:
Jino-ar
Mas-ar
Zend-ar
Yont-ar
Opatan-ar
Lonopon-or
Bikalaman-ar
Pemunt-ar
Suvurutarc-ar
Finally, the length of this name may indicate that it is double-suffixed:
Opikiman-ar-as
(Note: the suffix vowel in the name Lonoponor may be /o/ instead of /a/ because of something called vowel harmony, a phenomenon in which an affix vowel has to agree in some feature with the preceding root vowel. This may not occur in the name Yontar because vowel harmony is blocked by a consonant cluster, and it may not occur in Jinoar because of a rule against vowel assimilation -- this is all very speculative given the paucity of data.)
It is impossible to say with any certainty what kind of suffixes /-as/ and /-ar/ were, but since these are names for nouns (i.e. planets), one possibility is that they were nominalizers, or suffixes which convert another part of speech (such as a verb or an adjective) into a noun. An example in English is the suffix /-er/, which converts a verb into a noun: help > helper, burn > burner, and so forth. If this assumption is correct, then this means that the roots of the planet names (the main part without the suffix) may be verbs or adjectives.
I know parts of this are a bit technical if you don't have a linguistics background, but I hope it will still be interesting to read and fun to think about.