The Syntax of places in the Proto-Drem language:

 

Architecture and Building styles:

 

Architecture in Proto-Drem changed greatly over the 1400 years that Proto-Drem was spoken. Architecture has not really started in Dremish life yet. The shelters at the beginning of the Proto-Drem era were simple lean-to and small single room thatch huts where the average settlement had between 50 and 100 individuals organized on an extended family and clan structure. When later in the period, we see evidence of wood buildings, mostly all in a square or rectangular shape. Very rarely were stone buildings built during the Proto-Drem era. The buildings of the late Proto-Drem era where usually divided into 3 sections, a simple living quarters, private, and away from any public meeting area. The cooking area is usually in the middle or on the side, and the public area, almost always has a porch in the front. The settlements by the end of the Proto-Drem period saw beginning livestock/farming communities of 100 to 300 individuals. Buildings built during the period used hard clay mixed with straw as a kind of wattle and daub. The roves started as a thatch, and later in the forests had wooden plank roofs. As clans lived in the larger rectangular homes, sometimes a “room” to hold the animals was added to the normal house as well.

 

The five main ways the architecture changed are as follows. The effects of agriculture on the buildings didn’t occur until the end of the Proto-Drem period. Agriculture went hand-in-hand with animal husbandry, as cows, pigs, goats and sheep were seen. Barley, wheat and beans were seen and slash and burn agriculture seen in the early days was replaced with plowed fields, and a more efficient way of using the land. Enclosures used for gardens or pens to house your livestock became seen towards the late stages of the Proto-Drem era. Storage rooms to hold herbs, produce and your animals were also found, and so houses became larger and more complex. The economic changes occurred once copper started being mined, and shells were used as trade. Gold and silver had already been used as jewelry; it was with trade goods, and copper tools, that some clans became wealthy thru mining. The architecture change slightly as the new metallurgy formed, and metal good became known. Society slowly shifted from strictly communal to a more private ownership. This is especially seen in hearths, which started as a community hearth, and toward the end of the Proto-Drem era, hearths became found only inside homes. Culture also changed the way people built buildings. With a new found wealth thru obsidian arrow heads, shells for trade, gold, silver, and copper tools, clans, and an entire settlement could become very wealthy, and so we see a rise in social prestige depending on the clan. We see funeral offerings, and wide varieties of items put into a tomb. Lastly was a spiritual aspect. Shamans intently watching the sky and watched the stars, guided clans on the changes in weather and the seasons, and were expert herbalists and could heal sickness easily. Stone Megaliths with small stone circles to tell the season and a “healers hut” became seen in large and wealthy settlements.

 

Building zones during Early and Mid Dremish periods (6400 BCE – 5600 BCE):

 

Almost all buildings in the early & mid Proto-Drem period can be divided into three zones:

 

The XXX (open land) is what later would become the porch. It is close into the ‘entrance’ to the hut or lean-to. This area is for welcoming and inviting guests. This area is also very close to the settlements communal center area where all the women cook and prepare food. This open space has a few hides to protect the legs or those sitting down here, and in case the weather is bad, a hide can be pulled up and held up with a large stick. This has the effect and usage much like the roof over the porch in Late Dremish days.

 

The XXX was a simple affair. Usually made of 30 or more straight saplings, green and flexible and placed in a circular pattern and bent over to form a box shaped hut. The hut would be encased in local elephant hides sewn together to make for a water-resistant and durable shell that can be easily taken apart and light enough to travel with for nomadic life. The entrance would be either open or closed with a tanned hide depending on the season. The top of the shell would have a hole for the smoke and was called XXX. The shell was lined during winter with furs and privacy, and could easily last for 3 years. An old shell was made into new tipi patches or even shoes that were very durable due to weathering and smoke over the years.

 

The XXX is the hearth and the centerpiece of the early Dremish hut. The food that is prepared outside is now eaten inside, and so the center of the hut is the center of the family life. The space is small and the fire is kept small to keep the whole hut warm in any season of the year.

 

Building zones during Late Dremish periods (5600 BCE – 5000 BCE):

Almost all buildings in the late Proto-Drem period can be divided into three zones:

 

The XXX is a public display area which everyone is welcome to visit. The area is sometimes a simple porch by the front entrance, or it is a small front room of the house. A house with a porch will almost always have a roof over the porch to shade the porch. The roof over the porch will sometimes have a slender pole to keep the roof from collapsing. If just a simple room, the room has a few hides or furs set here for people to sit and relax as they get out of the weather.

 

Only the wealthy could ‘afford’ or would have the space to build a fourth room, so most of the time, only the clan chiefs would build the XXX or the room to entertain, bring in guests, talk, while inside the house itself. So a wealthy person’s house would actually have four rooms. This room acts just like the porch, except it is inside to protect against weather and intrusions. In the mindset of the Drem, this ‘room’ is still part of the Porch, just inside the house.

 

The XXX is the personal domain. The area is a family sleeping room, where the whole family sleeps. Bedding is basically a simple bed of leaves, straw with a hide used as a blanket to keep the sleeper warm. The bed is sometimes raised above the floor, so that the “bed” is not cold as the cold air stays on the floor. The bed is raised usually with a large tree trunk that is flattened on both ends, and the height of the bed is usually from the people’s knee to the floor, or roughly 1 to 1 ½ feet. The beds are all along the wall of the house as to keep the center aisle open for anybody to walk thru from the entrance say to the kitchen.

 

 Between the XXX and the XXX will lay the XXX, which is the eating/cooking area. Food preparation, the days hunt, any fruit, nuts, or seeds are brought here, the house hearth is here and since fire is so important, a pile of wood to keep the fire going is always found in this room. The hearth used to be a simple hole dug into the floor, and is pretty much a large clay or stone bowl. Utensils such as a wooden spoon or stirring stick are commonly seen here. The women of the family site here when work is done, as food is brought thru a window on one of the walls. Rarely, a stone for grinding nuts is found here, and usually with only the most important families would have one.

Since all buildings have but one entrance between the XXX (open land) and the XXX, the XXX is used for any building door or gate.

 

Basics of Proto-Drem Name Syntax:

 

Syntax is the way sentences and clauses are divided up to give them words meaning. The arrangement is usually important is any language, Proto-Drem is no different. Syntax for naming is divided into 3 general areas, Rooms/Buildings, Place names and Personal Names. One important key to note here is the lack of modifiers. No particles, conjunctions, no affix markers, these naming clauses are basically just a string of roots put into a specific order to give meaning. These naming clauses, just like normal ones, keep the key root at the end, which is the focus for the whole clause. The roots that precede the main root, are once again description roots, just like adjectives and adverbs, for instance ‘Green River’ where the river is our focus, and green is our description of the river.

 

 

1)     Initial Modifier: for Architecture, the root can be usually not found. It is uncommonly seen in room names. Initial Modifiers are seen a lot in Building names, and Place names with the commonly seen root XXX which means ‘To be situated/located at’ and is used here as “place, place of”

2)     Descriptor roots are nearly always there for names, in that these descriptor roots are used exactly like adjectives and adverbs in Proto-Drem.

3)     Main root: The main root is just that, the focus of the name. If one is talking of a mountain, and focusing on that mountain, then your main root will be Njan ‘Peak, Mountain’

 

Proto-Drem word	Room/Place Names	Room/Place meaning
XXX	outside	Any area outside a building (excluding gardens and waste area).  The area outside, depending on where it is, could be part of the ‘communal’ center for either a clan or a family group, or would be considered ‘outside of the village’.
XXX	the public room	Means ‘Place for people’, the room for the public within a house. Only the wealthy would be able to have one of these.
XXX	Herbal garden/pasture	Means ‘field, enclosure, fenced off area for grass, hay, plants’. The herbs would all be naturally growing here, and still haphazard and not in a ‘garden layout’ per say.
XXX	the cooking space	Means ‘Place for cooking pot’. The kitchen would of course have a large clay base to catch any ‘sparks’. There would be stones to prop up the pot, a wooden spoon, a stirrer, a spatula, and wood chips for the fire. The kitchen would normally make gruel, a sort of ‘flat cake’ and cooking meat.
XXX	Courtyard/porch	Means ‘Place for guest Messenger’ usually a guest of the house that is greeted at the front entrance, before they are brought in.
XXX	Stairs	The stairs are a slim tree trunk, about 4” wide and roughly 10’ to 15’ long, and is placed along the ground, to the porch and the door of the hut. The pole is notched so as to make a person gain footing better and not slip off.
XXX	Sleeping room	Means ‘Place for living quarters/sleeping’ Area set aside as the communal family sleeping area. The sleeping area is covered in furs and hides to provide warmth during winter. In this room, the clothing was also ‘sewn together’ as most clothing is made from soft bark to keep out rain and water.
XXX	roof	A simple roof made of long plates of tree bark sewn onto the support pieces of the roof. The tree bark works better at repelling rain and water than thatch, and lasts longer with repairs only needed once every couple of years. Thatch would be added over the tree bark layer to provide additional protection verses the weather.
XXX	Support Post	A simple wooden post used to support the roof, usually seen with 2 or 3 posts. The support posts are usually 4” wide and generally 10’ tall
XXX	House Pilings	For those living by the lake and bays, these were a common sight to prevent the house from being flooded. These Pilings were generally willows, about 10” thick.  The tree would be split in half and driven about 6’ into the soil to support the weight of the house. The house would generally sit about 4’ above the ground, and the pilings would last for 8 to 12 years before collapsing.
XXX	Smoke Hole	Means ‘Hole for smoke’ an important thing since the house was smoky anyways due to the cooking, so the excess smoke needed a hole to get out.
XXX	Window	Means ‘See outside of hut’, usually just an open hole that uses a hide as a “cover”
XXX	Totem Pole	Means ‘Sacred Support tree’. The totem post is usually seen outside attached to the porch and is a log carved and painted with images of the clan’s totem spirit.
XXX	Hearth/Fire-pit	Means ‘Fire, flame for cooking pot’ usually a simple bowl shaped pit dug into the floor with wood for a cooking fire. The floor under the pot was a thick layer of clay to catch sparks and to jeep a fire contained. The hearth in the central item in most huts.
XXX	Floor	The floor which is usually packed earth covered with hides or straw. Later in Late Proto-Drem era, the floors are wooden and the furs used as bedding cover the floor
XXX	Attic	This area is kept open, as it holds most of the commonly stored items in the hut.  The storage was in ‘boxes’ made of stitched tree back, and some boxes were 3’ wide. These boxes commonly kept food items such as ground wild grains, nuts and berries.
XXX	Waste area	This area outside of the hut normally dealt with grinding wild grains, carving up deer or wild boar. Splitting firewood and carving bone tools are done here as well.
	Building names
XXX	Shrine	Means ‘Place to ask, entreat, and talk to protective spirits’. The place is usually simple, made of branches and stones and usually covered with a large flat stone for any offerings to give the spirits.
XXX	Hut-group	Means ‘a family lives here’. The huts are generally small, yet, families do grow quickly, and so a hut will have only part of the extended family, So a large family groups together huts into a general circle to form a tiny central compound and so each hut might have a brother and his family while the largest hut is kept by the patriarch of the family. When a family gets large enough, it forms its own clan, choose a totem and searches for hunting grounds so as not to deplete the current one.
XX	Mine	Means ‘Place to dig the hill’ The mines are generally uncommon still, but known to produce fine quality flint and copper
XXX	Stone Circle/Observatory	Means ‘Place to watch over the morning star’ since the observatory had lines to the equinox, solstice, and bright stars to pin point when the seasons planned to change. The Shamans watch the night sky and generally speak of seasons, and “time to plant”, or to “move to higher ground” since spring floods are on the way, so the shamans keep a close eye on the night sky for certain events to occur.
XXX	Tomb	Means ‘Place for the dead to sleep’. These tombs were usually dolmen made of granite blocks and were done for clan leaders or chiefs
XXX	Healers Hut	Means ‘Place of the healing shaman’ The hut is usually always found by the community herb garden and stone circle, so that the shaman has easy access to healing herbs and “star charts”

 

Place Names syntax:

 

Place names in Proto-Drem really were never a stable thing. Names did change over the centuries, although rarely did they change where a name meant a completely different thing. Since the initial Dremish peoples were nomadic hunter-gatherers, landmarks were transitory and only for the clans hunting grounds, and so names took a long descriptive style that combined roots in a “fast and loose’ way which is similar to standard Proto-Drem clause syntax to this day. Due the changing tides of word meanings, place names are apt to change, take for instance the ‘Great Ice Peaks’ which today are called the Great Grey Mountains.

 

 

1)     Degree Modifier root: This ‘root’ is really a marker from the Degree of comparison, and is usually m- meaning ‘Great’. Not all place names will have a Degree modifier.

2)     Descriptor roots: used just like adjectives and adverbs, these roots describe a places description no matter if tall, foggy, or dark. These roots are always considered to be as adjectival or adverbial without marking as such.

3)     Main/Focus Root: The main root is the key to the name, it sums up all that we are talking about, no matter if a cave, mountain, ice field, or Sea

 

The following is an (incomplete) list of words used for various place names:

	Place Names
XXX	Great Grey Mountains	Means ‘Great Ice Peaks’ The large and expansive chain of mountains running north and south along the continent. At the time of the Proto-Drem era, glaciers and snowfields were somewhat common, as cave systems  were easily found for safety
XXX	Great Eastern Forest	Means ‘The Great Forest of the East’ The large expanse of forest on the eastern edge of Dremish lands. It is today known as Kornoth woods by locals. Then, the woods were home to the remaining Pleistocene animals that still roamed the region. This temperate rainforest is fairly large for the region and is quite wet receiving over 200” of rainfall each year.  The trees commonly reach over 200’ with a few reaching 300’. The trees are commonly 25’ around and more.
XXX	Demon Swamp	Means ‘Swamp of Demons’ A large marshy swamp then connected to the sea, filled with all sorts of creatures, as tales of warriors disappearing or going insane are uncommon, and strange glowing balls of light all tend to keep the swamp a dark and foreboding place. The Swamp is large and fairly flat, dotted with tall conifers that keep the swamp generally a dark, gloomy place.
XXX	Bay of Dark Dreams	Means ‘Bay of the Dreams of Death’ The good sized body of water used for fishing, trading, and everyday commerce, yet has surprise storms making travel treacherous sometimes. The Bay is well traveled with fishermen of differing clans, and hunters stalking pray along the marshy edges. The storms are to be feared, as they are sudden with major temperature drops and lightning being frequent.
XXX	Western Highlands	Means ‘The Highlands of Dawn’ The commonly lived in area by the Drem, mining, forestry and hunting is very common here. The clans who mine here find good quality flint and even small bits of copper. These hills are rough and filled with caves and ravines and so provide plenty of shelter for the ample game in the area.
XXX	Grasslands of Fire	Means ‘grasslands of fire’ The large expanse of grassy plains south of Dremish lands have pockets of conifers and rolling hills and is a place of ample game, and migratory herds. The summer is typically hot as a lightning strike can cause a spark to start a wildfire. The grasses can reach 12” easily and can reach even 3’, which can easily hide hunters as they follow the herds.
XXX	The Hills of Sorrow	Means ‘Hills of sorrow’ These hills dot the eastern areas of Dremish lands, filled with all sorts of game. The glaciers that dotted these hills are long gone, but there are plentiful caves and tales of ‘strangers’ from the east seen in the area.
XXX	Spider Fens	To the north of the Dremish lands, still close to the great forest, lies a swamp of such an evil, dark reputation, that the swamp is thought of as a tall tale by some. The stinking, fetid bogs get its name from the seemingly intelligent large spiders that inhabit the area.
XXX	Refuge Lake	The lake is on the northern border of Dremish lands, and so is shared with another nomadic peoples who lived north of the highlands and Great Forest

 

Personal Names syntax:

                                                                                                                                                                            

Personal names changed over the centuries. Early in the Proto-Drem era, animal names were popular, as were items of nature, like trees, mountains, or other impressive things. Late in the era, as specialization and ‘duties’ began to start, titles like ‘plowman’, ‘miner’, ‘shell collector’, ‘tool-maker’ and so on. Clans started to specialize, as the whole clan started to do one or two ‘duties’ depending on the demand for the trade item. Economic strength took shape, as Agriculture and Husbandry started up, as the old hunter-gatherer way of way slowly died out with most of the Drem tribe, although the old ways still held true deep in the forests, as the clans there stayed with an elfish way of life.

 

Personal names are divided fairly simply, direct and to the point. The given name for a person, is a spiritual name given by the clan at the persons birth, always comes first. Next are any descriptors in the name. Most of the time, one descriptor is enough, although more are rarely seen. The title is next, and as we have seen above, does change with time. Lastly is another aspect that has changed. Clan names over time have changed to locations, which mostly are names of the settlements that the clan comes from.

 

 

4)     Given name Root: a person’s given name at birth by the family. Most male names use back vowel harmony/low tones most woman have front vowel harmony/high tones and childhood ‘nicknames’ use mostly frontal vowel harmony with a mix of tone types.

5)     Descriptor roots: used just like adjectives and adverbs, these roots describe a persons attributes, their ‘job’ or duty. These roots can as few as one or as many as four for some famous chiefs or Shamans.

6)     Title root: This root is nearly used with only one root, one that usually encompasses their whole life, or attitude. Rarely are there two title words.

7)     Clan/Locator root: This important root tells one where the person is from, which settlement or clan.

 

	Personal Names
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