Conreligion Checklist Sidequest: Religion as an analogy of language

Language is not merely a vocabulary and a set of rules for how to generate and parse well-formed sentences. A proficient speaker also knows how to express himself idiomatically and in a culturally appropriate way. It also provides metaphors which can help a speaker express ideas.

A language is not a question of belief - normally, a speaker doesn't have to "believe" that 'nutmeg' is a spice derived from a certain plant's grated nuts. It's a question of convention. A speaker doesn't "believe" that it's rude to say certain types of utterances in certain contexts, it's rude by his understanding of the conventions of the speaker community.

In some ways, religion provides a similar set of conventions. Sometimes, some of these conventions may seem odd and superstitious, but as a shared set of conventions, they may help provide some way in which to parse human interactions, as well as render them somewhat more constructively predictable for other participants in the interaction.

Let's consider one example - sitting shiva. In Jewish culture, upon someone's death, there are many rules that govern the behavior of the nearest family of the departed, as well as how the community is expected to behave with regards to them. After the funeral, shiva begins and lasts for a week. During this week,

• You are expected to visit those who grieve.
  
• You don't start a conversation with them; you let the grieving family start conversations if they like.
• You can bring food. (NB: Of course, this is expected to be kosher food.)

There are more rules than these - and the rules may seem onerous and nitpicky. But ...

• They provide a clear 'manuscript' which to follow; you don't need to worry about what to say to the bereaved.
• They provide a clear, understood way of how to express your sympathies. You know what to do, the bereaved know what you'll do. This is a bit like having a shared set of vocabulary, and using that shared set of vocabulary. You don't need to come up with your own attempts at showing sympathy, and risk it being misunderstood.
  

In Jewish mourning, there's several other minor rituals - some of which are somewhat physical (and maybe cathartic for that reason, e.g. tearing a cloth,

Sitting shiva has a very specific time frame - a week. Other parts of the mourning last for a month, and finally some parts a year. This might seem odd to regulate, but this too provides people a 'manuscript' to go by. No matter how important a person was to you, life must go on. Providing rituals and specific dates as a kind of roadmap to grief may in some sense help manage the emotional baggage.

Probably, other practices besides funerary one provide similar contexts to people - even less dramatic ones like, say, festive holidays. These provide a shared language for joyous interactions, without having to come up with a great deal of explanations why I'd like to get someone drunk.

Conreligion: Lirbexper Funerary Rites and Beliefs

In Lirbexper belief, the afterlife begins as a member of a war party in the battle against various supernatural entities. Some parts of the ritual praxis and religious literature  in part is meant to prepare the members for this battle. However, as mentioned, this is a party. Not just one person.

Upon death, a person undergoes a short primary temporary interment, waiting for a full party to be assembled. At this interment, ritual symbolic weapons and devices for resting are given. The actual ritualized part of it is very short. The afterlife is not considered to have begun yet - this is a gray zone between dead and alive, and for certain types of religious observances, one is considered alive. (So, for instance, the family should still mention their recently dead in certain rituals.)

After this, the body is left to wait until a sufficiently large group of dead is assembled - usually 8 or more, depending partially on ages and status of the dead - preferably, someone who has achieved certain religious ranks should be included, in order to be able to ensure the strength of the party. Once a sufficient group is assembled, the actual funeral is performed for the entire party, and the families of the dead will arrange a celebration where the whole community together wish the dead luck in their raids, and also reminisce about them.

The date for the funeral is decided based on several types of divination, including astrology. Certain communities may also decide the burial place depending on the results of divination. Usually, a shared monument is raised at the place of burial.

Rituals

There are fairly standardized liturgies used at the first and second funeral; the bodies are clothed and equipped after a standardized manner. Symbolic weapons - and sometimes real weapons - are given to the dead at the second funeral. At the first funeral, the gifts are meant to give the dead person rest until the challenges ahead.

Complications - found bodies, lost bodies

Certain kinds of accidents or injuries may cause the body to be lost, and may sometimes even leave mourners unsure as to whether a person even has died. This may especially be the case with travelers who die far away. After a certain time, an effigy of the lost person may be buried with a group, but is not counted towards the full number - in the case of a mistake, the effigy would otherwise reduce the actual number of participants, and this must be avoided.

An unknown, found body is likewise sometimes buried with a group, but not counted: the body may already have been included in effigy elsewhere. Also, in case he is not a member of the community, it is assumed he will not be participating in the party, as the afterlife is assumed to work differently for other communities. If the body seems to be very recently dead, it will be left to wait at least a month. This can be cause for postponing a burial of an established group.

During this month, inquiries may also be done to other communities, to identify the corpse, in which case the originating community may take care of the body instead.

In both of the cases where the corpse is buried with a group, the officiant will also read a petition for forgiveness - in case the ritual causes additional bother to one who already has undergone it or in case the ritual causes irrelevant bother to someone who is not meant to participate in it. In case an effigy is present, an invitation to any non-buried dead of the faith is also extended in case the intended addressee does not need it.

Controversies

In more modern times, the question of whether you really have to be buried together with someone who you fear appeared. Especially people who had been abused by certain other members of the community may fear having to endure a considerable chunk of their afterlife with their abusers. Originally, clergy opposed such considerations, as it was against tradition, as well as against the will of God: had he chosen that you should die near the time of another person's death, he clearly wanted the two of you in the same team.

However, the undeniable evidence that noblemen, clergy, and even just generally rich people always had been able to get their wishes respected, including wishes such as not to be buried with commoners, or to be buried with particular types of people - to the point where people sometimes were killed in order to accommodate such wishes, medium-conservative clergy would over time start accepting such requests from commoners as well.

Conservative clergy, however, would reject these concerns. Radical clergy held that the afterlife was a myth, and the burial ceremonies were just a way of illustrating very clearly that we are all the same in the face of death, regardless of behavior or achievements, and for this reason worked hard to remove the privilege of choice from the upper classes instead.

 

 

 

Detail #440: Generalizing V2

V2 is a peculiar syntactical structure present in western and northern Europe, which governs where the finite verb goes in a main clause. Historically, it has had some presence in some Romance and Celtic languages, is still present in almost all Germanic languages, Estonian, and is also present in a few other languages worldwide. There's differences in whether these languages apply V2 to subclauses or not, (or even to what types of subclauses they apply them), and how strictly the V2 rule operates.

When trying to come up with new ideas, I like to 'parametrize' a concept and alter the parameters.

The first parameter of V2 that occurs to people tend to be the number, and of course, increasing that to 3 is an obvious idea. And naturally, one could even go further, to 'V4' or whatever, but such seems to require increased numbers of mandatory arguments, dummy arguments, or permitting V3 and V2 in circumstances where too few arguments are present.

However, there's a few other things we can do. Besides, grammar in general seems to be bad at counting past two. However, it seems to be rather good at counting both backwards and forwards. Thus, we could have V-2, where '-' denotes minus, and I'll parse that as in python list comprehension - i.e. counting from the end. This could signify having the verb always being the penultimate word.

This could lead to VS but SVO, but also SVAdv, etc.

However, there's a different parameter we can change: S2 - subject second! VSO, but also permitting OSV, AdvSV, VSAdv, etc. O2 is of course also conceivable, (or erg2 or abs2 or whatever), but in the case of O2 or Erg2, we do run into the question of how to deal with intransitive clauses.

We could also have a more general NP2, where any noun phrase qualifies. One could imagine having a subset of possible arguments: (S or O)2, or even weirder pairings like (Adv or V)2.

In Swedish, there's a handful of adverbials that can go between the subject and the verb, or at the beginning of a clause yet be followed by SV. Such lexical exceptions can of course also be considered for a conlang.

A different parameter we could imagine changing 'where does the rule apply'. For now, V2 applies on sentence level. We could imagine a similar rule that applies in a verb phrase or in a noun phrase, e.g. 'article comes second' or 'TAM marker is the second constituent of the verb phrase'. I am aware of some such rules in some languages, esp. w.r.t. articles and e.g. Wackernagel-position clitics in Latin and Russian.

 

Detail #439: Quasi-parts of speech and quasi-constituents and the Locus of the Abessive

Different languages are analyzed with different sets of parts of speech and constituents/parts of sentences. To some extent these boil down to grammatical traditions, but to a great extent they also boil down to actual grammatical phenomena. However, if we were to compare, say, Swedish and English, the differences are largely superficial: both descriptive traditions work with barely any modifications to describe either language. A trivial example: Swedish grammar tradition has "subjunctions", which in the English tradition are subsumed under "conjunctions". Subjunctions are words that introduce subclauses, i.e. subordinating conjunctions. A description of English would be marginally different if this concept was introduced.

In some languages, however, distinguishing adjectives from nouns - or adjectives from verbs in some other languages - makes way less sense. Applying such a distinction would be looking at it through a decidedly foreign lens. Sometimes, which part of speech a word belongs to is hard to pinpoint: a word may be both a verb and an adverb, or a noun and an adverb, or a noun and an adjective, etc.

A thing that interests me, however, are a variety of ways in which constituents and parts of speech may behave in ways that justify considering them some kind of quasi-PoS or quasi-constituent, constituents that show some kind of uniformity, but cut across other constituents.

One such example I have been sketching over recent months is what I chose to call "the locus of the abessive". This locus is marked by a certain case (which however also is used for some other constituents), but can appear as subjects, objects, indirect objects, possessors, possessums and other constituents. The abessive itself could also be considered a type of quasi-constituent.

The syntax of this entity gets complicated. First of all, the locus can be any of the following:

• topic
  
• subject: I miss her
  
• object: he deprived them of shelter
  
• indirect object: they gave him no food
• location: there is no joy in Aylesbury
• possessor: the orphan's mom
• possessum: the man's widow
• infinitives of various functions: there's no reason to hate him

What if the locus of the abessive could be coordinated over gaps, even when it isn't the same role? 'They deprived him of shelter and gave no food' would then have 'him' as the indirect object of 'gave'. This could get really tricky once possessors and possessums and infinitives start getting involved.

 

About Bryatesle and its relatives

About Bryatesle and its relatives

Bryatesle is a dialect continuum encompassing about 30 million native speakers. It is the lingua franca of about 40 million additional speakers, has a rich literature - fictional, scientific, philosophic, religious and instructional, in both poetic and prose forms - liturgies in multiple religions, songs, humor, word games, and a variety of other linguistic devices. Dialectal differences are sufficient that several ends of the dialect continuum are not mutually intelligible, but the standard forms of the language provide common ground for scholars, businessmen, clergymen, government officials and regular people.

Short history

The pre-historic connections between Bryatesle and its kin languages indicate a rather sudden expansion from the Dairwueh-Bryatesle urheimat about 3800 years before the present year (bpy), after a previous split from Sargalk.

Bryatesle tribes started forming city states sometimes roughly 1800 bpy, at which time also writing systems were adopted from Tatediem cultures to the south. Maritime and fluvial trade networks led to about 40 city states forming around the sea of Sadgal and the sea of Gudnyt as well as the great lake Pajik over the next 800 years. Expansion both east- and northwards included assimilation of some Cwarminoid and Tatediem populations. Westwards, Dairwueh tribes partially resisted Bryatesle expansion, partially stood as equal partners in trade and industry, partially stood in political unity, partially expanded onto Bryatesle areas. Several westwards city states in fact were bilingual, and conflicts were not necessarily as much between Dairwueh and Bryatesle, but rather between distinct alliances of dairwobryatesle states.

About 1200 years ago, a stronger political unity over the dairwobryatesle world emerged, with  Ykred emerging as a capital of sorts. This unity lasted 300 years, but after 200 years of dissolution and strife, the last 700 years have seen a somewhat less centralized, but still united dairwobryatesle world, now under the domination of the city-state Sţesar. Although some consolidation of the various standard Bryatesle dialects has occurred due to improved communications, significant differences persist.

Geoculturopolitically, there are occasional confrontations with the Ćwarmin civilization to the east. In the far east, the Ŋʒädär have some trade relations with the Dairwuobryatesle. Southwards, we find the Tatediem engaging in trade, diplomacy, proselytization and sometimes war.

Related languages

The Sargalk-Bryatesle-Dairwueh family consists of the following languages and major dialects (italicized)

• The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk Branch
• The Sargaĺk branch
• Sargaĺk
• northern Sargaĺk
• Inraj Sargaĺk
• Geʔamik †
• Tudiluk †

• The Hefnarač branch
• Hefnarač
• Sindeʔʔet †
• Bidlahʔa †
• The Rilgouz branch
• Simiz †
• Rilgouz
• The Adrk languages
• Adrk
• Tarts †
• Vimil
• The Dairwueh-Bryatesle Branch
• The Dairwueh Branch
• Dairwueh
• Western
• Central
• Bundur
• Vist †
• Kappeuje †
• The Nerazg Branch †
• The Bryatesle Branch
• Northern
  
• Bryatesle
• Western Tarist
• Southern
• Tarist
• Kurelwai †
• Trinzlye †

The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk Branch

The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk branch consists of three extant languages, Hefnarač, Sargaĺk and Inraj Sargaĺk. , Inraj Sargaĺk is moribund, with about 500 speakers. Hefnarač and Sargaĺk each have about 20 000 speakers, but language change towards Dairwueh and Cwarmin are weakening them both. More extinct languages are hinted at from old sources. Geʔamik, Tudiluk, Sindeʔʔet and Bidlahʔa have all gone extinct during the last 100 years. Small word lists for about a dozen other languages that probably were also related have been compiled by scholars and missionaries. The time-depth of the relation between Hefnarač and Sargaĺk is probably on the order of 3500 years or more. The most recent common ancestor between Hefnarač-Sargaĺk and Dairwueh-Bryatesle is probably about 4500 years ago or more.

The Rilgouz Branch

The Rilgouz languages are spoken on islands west of the main Dairwueh lands. The total number of Rilgouz speakers probably is about two million, with Adrk and Vimil having about 3000 each. Whether these languages diverged earlier or later than the HS/BD split is unclear, and even then it is a bit unclear which branch they diverge from: there are isoglosses that pair any two of the three branches, exclude the third - both for sound changes, semantic changes and grammar changes. There even are lexemes that single-handedly occupy conflicting isoglosses.

The Dairwueh branch

An overwhelming amount of shared innovations indicate that the Dairwueh and Bryatesle branches are closely related, having diverged at most 3500 years ago. Dairwueh and Bundur separated about 1500 years ago, Vist and Kappeuje were arguably divergent dialects that have since merged into Dairwueh leaving substratal traces.

The Nerazg branch

A few moribund languages with clearly para-Dairwueh/para-Bryatesle features have been assigned into this family. Research is ongoing, but the evidence is unclear.

 

The Bryatesle branch

Bryatesle's nearest living relative is Western Tarist, which diverged under the last 1000 years or so. Trinzlye and the southern branch encompassing Tarist and Kurelwai diverged about 1500 years ago, only to see Kurelwai mostly assimilate back into Tarist (but also to some extent into Bryatesle).

Trinzlye was largely assimilated into Dairwueh, where it has left some traits as well.

Arguably, there is a dialect continuum between Bryatesle and Western Tarist.

Detail #438: Split Marked Nominative

Split Marked Nominative is a phrase that struck me out of the blue, and I felt like it needs a post. However, let's begin by looking at something slightly related.

We'll start, as usual, with Finnish. Because that's where some pretty crazy stuff can be found. Finnish, in some sense, has a "split marked accusative" system. But first, we need to disentangle the Finnish differential object and subject system:

Finnish marks existential subjects (but also objects) by the partitive. Existential verbs tend to be intransitive, so this doesn't affect the object marking much.

Finnish marks atelicity or negativity by having the object in the partitive case. Thus, only telic, positive verb phrases have the object in the accusative.

Now on to the "split marked accusative". First: plural accusatives and pronominal accusatives have no split: -t all the way (for nouns, -t is the nom/acc plural marker, for pronouns, -t is the accusative marker). For singulars, however, if the verb licenses a nominative subject, the noun is in the marked accusative (identical to the genitive). If the verb licenses no nominative subject, however, it is in the unmarked accusative. (Certain auxiliaries require a genitive subject, and e.g. the passive has no subject in Finnish - the object isn't raised to subject. Also, imperatives license no nominative subject.)

 

Now, on to the split marked nominative. In case the atypical constructions require the nominative marking, I think it would be better to describe it by some other term - e.g. quirky case. However, if the nominative marker is present in standard transitive and intransitive clauses, and only get dropped in some contexts, calling it "split marked nominative" makes more sense. If e.g. pronouns keep their nominative in all contexts, and maybe some other markers (optional quantifiers, demonstratives, etc) also signal nominative, this should be good.

So, now, where does the nominative go less marked or unmarked?

• subclauses
• with certain auxiliaries
• (negative) existential statements?
• with certain types of subjects? (E.g. proper nouns or mass nouns or something?)
• Certain TAMs?

How would a system like this come about? I guess a simple grammaticalization path would be "degenerate ergativity".

Regulations of Minor Dairwuo-Bryatesle Religions

The Dairwuo-Bryatesle communities are religiously dominated by a rather powerful "conglomerate" of religions, a dozen organized monotheisms forming a sort of religious "alliance". This alliance regulates and smooths the interaction of rather diverse religions under a single religious umbrella - imagine if all of the abrahamic religions had one pope, and lived in a weird denial about the fact that they're pretty different.

This might seem to be a peaceful and tolerant arrangement, but the system does maintain a variety of oppressive practices. Among these, we find the treatment of minor religions.

The minor religions of the Dairwuo-Bryatesle word are generally regional religions that predate the spread of the main flavours of DB religion. Some of them clearly are related to some of the modern religious communities, others less so. However, in order to maintain religious peace, we find a variety of regulations that various local rulers have instituted.

We find a variety of rather different types of rules as well as approaches to rules, which after codification often have remained in effect for more than five centuries. Some rules are clearly capricious, intended to circumscribe the lives of the minority religions. Some are based on misunderstandings - e.g. the legate of the empire has banned something under the impression that it's important for the community, yet it turns out it never was of any significance. Sometimes, sympathetic legates have ruled in ways that enforce the minority religion's rules, i.e. giving imperial sanction to the community's rules for itself. Sometimes, this too has been based on misunderstandings - but due to the nature of the negotiations, the minority religions' voices seldom were heard very well.

The leaders - oftentimes an inherited position - are afforded some of the respect of a major religion's middle-level clergy, but not all of it. Inherited leaders tend to be seen as comparable to noblemen, whereas leaders who are chosen by other means - meritocratically, democratically, randomly, or in some other way, are usually afforded less respect by surrounding communities.

Primarily, all of these movements are banned from proselytizing, and their practitioners may not ascend to any (higher) public office. Additionally, noblemen may not join them. Only a handful of noble families are members of minor religions.

As they often are ethnoreligions (or even 'subtribal religions'), not all of them even accept converts in the first place. Further restrictions on conversion may exist:

• In the south, it is common for members of the minor religions to be forbidden from converting to major religions. This does strengthen these religions' viability over time, but was for some reason understood as a punishment by the rulers instituting this rule.
• In the north, rules for conversion w.r.t. minor religions vary strongly:
• Kmusre ves is only permitted to accept female converts. This is an intentional legal irony, as kmusre ves only really is a religion practiced by men.
• Members of nybritmu ves may only convert to the major nukper movement; however, a convert's offspring is not considered nukper, and must thus personally convert as well. This continues for as many generations as anyone can remember that someone's of nybritmu origin.
  
• Telat ves may not convert, but they may convert an infant of theirs to the kenoper religion.
• Sadres ves can accept converts - but conversion must be for a span of five generations, i.e. the sixth generation reverts to the ancestral religion.
• Several minor religions may accept converts from other minor religions, but must never accept a member of a major religion.
• Tilib ves, a religion that does not really have a notion of conversion, must accept a freed slave if he wants to convert. This regulation seems to be inserted purely due to the great disdain which the tilib doctrine holds for slaves and non-tilib.
  

Ritual rules also may apply:

• The tagrum uis may not own horses, nor use them in either ritual or professional contexts, unless ordered to do so by a non-tagrum.
• This has led to the tagrum breeding donkeys into ever more horse-like breeds.
• During the horse plagues of the seventh and tenth centuries, donkeys seem to have been way more resistent to the plague. Donkeys derived from the tagrum donkey population became an important export.
• The kmusre ves and the nybritmu ves are both under restrictions on fasting; fasting is an important religious expression in many areas, and the restrictions are thus:
• Any spontaneous fasting must be at least nine days long.
  
• The calendarically fixed fasts may not be longer than one day.
  
• Since a nine-day fast is very strenuous, the kmusre ves and the nybritmu ves have both gone in for not having spontaneous fasts at all. 
• Since fasts are seen as a way to call upon God to reduce a calamity, they often are used in times of plagues, which of course weakens the immune system. After several plagues, religious leaders realized that the kmusre ves and nybritmu ves had better survival rates than other religious communities: the restriction was scrapped, and I am happy to tell you that the nybritmu ves and kmusre ves are now permitted to fast spontaneously during times of plague.
• The southern Daster uis may only perform ritual magic for pay for members of major religions;the northern Isam ves may only perform ritual magic for members of minor religions.
• Numbate uis may not change their religious narratives or their rituals: for this reason, local officials have paid scholars to document their beliefs and practices as carefully as possible, and enforce orthodoxy and orthopraxy from the outside of the religion.
• Tavan ves may not commit any of their religion to paper, except for the bits that are present in the accords with the empire.
• The kmusre ves and the nybritmu ves both have restrictions on them that permit their priests from offering certain sacrifices to certain gods at certain times. These restrictions are specific to the clergy of each religion. The workaround that tends to be used is that nybritmu clergy perform the kmusre ves sacrifices and vice versa.
• Members of Telat ves may not talk of their religious beliefs if asked by an outsider. The law requires that they answer "I am forbidden by decree from the empire to speak of such things." Songs that are sung in public may only allude to their beliefs and never say them outright.
  
• Several of the religions may be forced to attend a major religion's house of worship once a year
• The numbate uis are forced to attend a Kindaper temple, but at a special event where no kindaper laity are present. The kindaper clergyman will generally berate the numbate uis for a while. Liberal kindaper clergymen may just go "nice, you're here, so, uh, wanna leave now?". Some really steadfastly chauvinist kindaper clergymen may "forget" to attend, leaving the numbate uis in a sort of legal limbo: they have no witness to prove that they attended, and they are legally mandated to do so.
  
• The daster uis must send contingents that have a progression through a lirbexper temple during service, singing certain traditional songs (that contradict daster uis beliefs).
• The kmusre ves must be at the far back of the migdaper assembly halls, but are overseen by a  clergyman to sign off that they were present.
  

Rules on religious buildings may exist:

• Tavan ves may not repair their religious buildings (but they may build new ones)
• Kmusre ves may not build new religious buildings (but may repair them, and may reappropriate buildings that have had other uses)
• Daster uis may not have religious buildings at all.
• The rules on where the religious buildings may be built are rather strict, as well as generally demanding them to be small, inconspicuous and humble. 

Rules on interacting with the civil society, with  the army, and several other such concepts exist:

• Military:
  
• Some religions must form their own minor armies to fight for the empire.
• Some are entirely forbidden from organizing armed groups.
• Some have mandatory quotas for military service.
• Justice system:
• Some are permitted to have their own courts in minor matters.
• Some are required to
  
•  Civil society
• The minor religions are mandated to keep a constant "census" of their members, and these books generally are considered "holy" in all of these religions.