Languages of Tarwas

Tarwas is a nation founded in the year 2144 by Tarpabap people who had immigrated through Paba. For more than 5000 years, it had resisted being swallowed up by the empires around it, until finally voluntarily joining The Poswob Empire around the year 7700. For the next thousand years after that, it used its strategic location (just east of Blop, the imperial capital) to present itself as an alternate way of life for Poswobs wishing to escape the poor living conditions in Blop and other Poswob cities. The Poswob Empire refers to its divisions as states, not nations, but most people in Tarwas still consider Tarwas to be an independent nation that merely has signed a mutual assistance pact with the Poswobs.

It is quite possible that Tarwas' language forms an independent, early-branching variety from the very beginning, perhaps even earlier than 2100 AD, and survives as such for at least the next 6700 years. Remember that there were border conflicts with Sakhi.

See Tarise and Tropical Rim. AlphaLeap#Tribal_warfare_in_the_south claims they spoke a TR language.

yet another possiblity is Paba#Tarpabap_domination. showing that they may have kept a Laban language like pejo language

These may be called Helmet languages. Just to the south of Tarwas, there were many different language families sharin the same land: beside Helmet, there were also Oyster, East Andanic, Creamer, and a few remnants like Tuq, the Repilian aboriginal languages, and the fringes of Moonshine.

Note that if Pabahais, Fern, or both is selected as the root of the Tarwas language family, this means that the Tarwastas were linguistically separate from the Tarpabaps and that Paba would not likely have thought of the two groups as a unit.

Early history

See Merar.

The settlers of Tarwas were of the Pejo tribes, tall and dark-skinned, and therefore stood out both the dark-skinned aboriginals and the light-skinned settlers who arrived with them. Their history is intimately linked with that of Paba, because the founders of Tarwas moved through Paba to reach their new homeland.

However, rather than being a single coordinated migration, the settlers of Tarwas may have been ethnically and culturally diverse, coming from all over the tropics, even if both the Pabaps and the aboriginals considered them to be as one. The various tribes would have been politically friendly to each other, but may not have merged into a single culture for quite some time. This helps explain why early visitors to Tarwas described it as being composed of many tiny colonies rather than being a unitary foreign nation. Note also that it was sometimes confused with Repilia.

If the Pejo population was culturally separate from the Pabaps the way the Andanese also were, then they would have arrived in Paba already speaking a separate language, presumably the same language that their kin spread into the tropics, meaning it would be yet another branch of the Tropical Rim family, and not a subfamily of an existing TR branch. This would require the Pejos (Tarpabaps) to live in Paba for 800 years without learning Paleo-Pabappa, though again, this is no different than the Andanese also doing this. The question is whether the Tarpabaps truly lived apart from the Pabaps in such a manner.

Possible entrainments

The first dark-skinned "Tarpabap" settlers may have spoken Paleo-Pabappa, the same language as the Pabaps at that time, even though the Andanese settlers had maintained their own language. This implies that they were culturally assimilated in a way that the Andanese were not. At the very least, looking further back, the two groups could only have spoken languages that diverged from Tapilula at most 670 years before the first signs of breakup of Paleo-Pabappa. Early history of Paba claims that Paba was not founded until 633 AD, meaning that Thaoa and AlphaLeap broke away just 400 years later.

The Nik people probably had their own language.

Southwestern Tip

The founders of Tarwas may have been largely new arrivals, culturally separate from the established Tarpabap population, and may therefore have had a language all their own, likely of the HP-3 family which was represented on the extreme southwestern part of the continent, in the tropical rainforest.

There were several Southwestern Tip nations, and it is likely that no language dominated the others.

Pabahais

Perhaps more likely than Southwestern Tip is Pabahais, an earlier migration that may have merged in with Atlam during the period when Atlam was independent. Pabahais and Atlam were located further east and therefore had greater access to the territories that were opening up for settlement. If Pabahais is a source of migration to Tarwas, it likely had just a single language at the time, because Pabahais' seven languages only split apart from each other much later on.

Fern languages

Similarly, the Fern languages were spoken further east than Pabahais, and the Ferns would therefore have even greater access to the woodlands of the north, although they were an isolated population that could not be refreshed by immigration, and therefore may not have been able to dominate other populations who were also migrating into the north.

The military pressure on their homeland by Kxesh may have led more Ferns to migrate to Tarwas than would otherwise be expected, and they could have pulled level with Pabahais or even been numerically dominant despite their much weaker position. Note, though, that other naval powers would need to cooperate; this was during the period where Nama controlled much of the seacoast, and would not have faciliated the migration if they knew that the migrants were planning to invade Nama.

Southeastern Kxesh

An unnamed territory between Atlam (Fernland) and Amade also suffered migration pressure. This is the easternmost territory that was not part of some larger empire, and thus the easternmost empire whose people would have been enticed to move to Paba and then through Paba into Tarwas. Its language was more plain than the others, lacking aspirates and the unusual "tropical" consonants like m̄ n̄ ṇ ŋ̄.

Tapilula (0) to Proto-Thaoa (1085)

1. The aspirated velar stop k became č before the vowel /i/. If another vowel followed, the /i/ disappeared. This happened even if the /i/ was accented.
2. When a "velaroid" consonant (/k ḳ ŋ h g l/) followed an accented high tone vowel, the vowel metathesized, leaving a closed syllable. Thus, for example, /àli/ > /ail/. These closed syllables were all high-toned, and are thus written without tone marks. Thus, for example, aa implies àa. Later, daughter languages introduced tone contrasts and independent sequences.
3. A schwa before another vowel in any syllable disappeared. Thus əa əe əi əo əu əə shifted to a e i o u ə. This happened in both open and closed syllables.
4. The sequences iu and ui shifted to ə̄.
5. The double-vowel sequences aa ee ii oo uu əə shifted to the single vowels a e i o u ə in closed syllables only.
6. The sequences ii uu əə (which now occurred only in open syllables) shifted to əi əu ə.
7. The sequences ie uo shifted to i u in open syllables only.
8. The sequences ai ei oi merged as ei; the sequences au eu ou merged as ou.
9. The sequences ea eə shifted to ee; meanwhile, oa oə became oo. Then, aə shifted to aa. Thus, the sequences /ee aa oo/ once again appeared in both open and closed syllables. Note, however, that much inherited /ea oa/ had participated in grammatical alternations with /əa/, which had become a simple /a/ by this time, and this is the form that was usually generalized.
10. The sequences ia ie io iə shifted to ī . Then ua ue uo uə shifted to ū.
11. In absolute final position, syllable-final ŋ changed to n. (But see below.)
12. Accented vowel-initial syllables gained a pharyngeal ʕ as an onset. Then the clusters nʕ kʕ shifted to g ḳ.
13. After long vowels, all consonants became voiced. Also, consonants occurring after initial vowels also became voiced. This created the new consonants v ǯ . Thus, final -h in words like hʷīh became -g. However, analogy made it so that the change was confined to open syllables in most words. This sound change did not affect diphthongs. There was no voiced velar stop, as all four velars simply shifted to fricatives.
14. After initial unstressed /u/, all consonants other than palatals became labialized. This change extended even to clusters. Because of the voicing rule, however, all of these consonants were voiced. vʷ > w.

    bʷ probably also shifted to w.

15. Initial vowels were deleted unless an illegal consonant cluster would have resulted. Sometimes root-initial vowels were retained due to classifier prefixes.
16. All schwas and diphthongs became low tone.
17. Labialized consonants lost their labialization when occuring after another labial or labialized consonant.
18. After a stressed syllable, intervocalic ʕ ʕʷ became g gʷ. This is due to reanalysis, not a true sound change.
19. The glottal fricatives h hʷ became velar; there was no spelling change.

The consonant inventory at this stage was:

                       BASIC                         LABIALIZED

Bilabials:             p   b   m   f   v                     mʷ      w  
Alveolars:             t   d   n       l             tʷ  dʷ  nʷ            
Postalveolars:         č   ǯ           y                       
Velars:                k       ŋ   h   g   ḳ                 ŋʷ  hʷ  gʷ

The vowel inventory was

Short vowels:          a  e  i  o  u  ə
Long vowels:           ā  ē  ī  ō  ū 
Falling diphthongs:      ae ei ao ou
                            əi    əu

The long vowels /ā ē ō/ can be spelled aa ee oo, but the high vowels /ī ū/ are usually not, because /i u/ before another vowel would indicate a glide. This list may have to be cut somewhere in the middle, with the full list applying to just one subbranch and ending around the year 2668.

Proto-Thaoa (1085) to proto-Helmet (2668)

Note that final /-h/ did not shift to /-s/ in this branch.

1. The voiced coronal obstruents d ǯ merged as r.
2. The sequences ae ao shifted to ai au.
3. The labialized obstruents tʷ dʷ gʷ shifted to pʷ w w.
4. The velar ejective ḳ merged to k.
5. The sequences č kč merged as s; preceding vowels retained their tones.
6. In word-initial position, the voiced velar fricative g shifted to y.
7. The labialized nasals mʷ nʷ ŋʷ merged as mʷ.
8. The voiced stop b shifted to v.
9. After a high tone, the voiceless fricatives hʷ f h shifted to kʷ p k. The /s/ did not shift.
10. After a low tone, the voiceless stops pʷ p t shifted to bʷ b d.
11. After a high tone, the nasals mʷ m n ŋ became the geminates mmʷ mm nn ŋŋ.
12. Tones were eliminated.
13. The sequences mpʷ mp nt shifted to mbʷ mb nd.
14. The clusters kpʷ kp kt kf shifted to ppʷ pp tt pp. Note that there was never a /ks/.
15. Any other final k shifted to h, which adopted previously existing sandhi rules such as /hm/ = [mp].
16. The labialized consonants kʷ pʷ bʷ mʷ shifted to p p b m. Then w shifted to v.
17. The diphthongs ai ei əi all merged as ē. Then au ou əu merged as ō. Then, the double vowel sequences aa ee ii oo uu became ā ē ī ō ū.

It is not clear if Tarwas branches off in 2144 or if it is refreshed by later settlers. It is even possible that it branches off around 1400, and that the last shared change is the shift of /mʷ nʷ ŋʷ/ > /mʷ/. See Thaoa for convenience.

Climate and geography

Tarwas has a very simple climate regime. The main state of Tarwas stretches from 30°N to 35°N and has no perceptible differences in temperature from the north end to the south end. The average temperature in winter is 0°C, in summer it is 20°C, and year-round the average is 10°C. This is because the expected temperature gain towards the south is exactly compensated for by the smooth upward slope of the land. The same thing occurs to the west in Nama.

Since temperature variation is insignificant from one end of the region to the other, the wildlife and plant life is also similar. However, the southern end of Tarwas experiences a moderate dry season during the summer, whereas towards the north it is wet all year round.