Talk:Kava

Grammar

Kava was isolated from the Gold language for most of its history, and therefore took most of its influence from the grammatically dissilimar Old Andanese language. This caused Kava to develop a very simple grammar, losing most of the Subumpamese suffixes, while gaining no new prefixes or infixes from Andanese. A new part of speech called an auxiliary verb or weak verb appeared, which carried the meaning of inflections and behaved like verbs except that they did not carry the classifier prefixes that full verbs did.

Some auxiliary verbs were derived from the Tapilula particles

1. ŋò with; next to; near
2. tò similar; to agree
3. ŋà on top of
4. hì member, dependent; underneath
5. kè covering; standing over
6. mə̀ overlapping; in front of
7. gà in front of
8. hà to be changed by
9. hù to capture, get
10. hʷò to see beauty, to cover
11. nə̀ moving
12. mò on top of
13. pì supported by
14. tà to push on
15. là to pull on; to focus on, see clearly

Proto-Subumpamese (~1700) to Kava (3138)

This branch originated in eastern Subumpam, but migrated by sea to a western area beginning in the year 2371 and was soon pushed out of its original homeland.

The consonant inventory was

Rounded bilabials:    pʷ  bʷ          w 
Bilabials:            p   b   m                   
Alveolars:            t   d   n   s   l             
Postalveolars:        č   ǯ   ň   š   ł           
Palatals:             ć               y
Prevelars:            c̀        
Velars:               k   ġ   ŋ   x   g
Labiovelars:          kʷ  ġʷ      xʷ  gʷ
Uvulars:              q           h              
Rounded uvulars:      qʷ          hʷ 

1. The schwas ə ə̄ shifted to u ū.
2. The mid vowels e o rotated to i ə.
3. The high vowel i shifted to ə if touching a /q/ in either direction.
4. Primordial hʷ w shifted to f v.
5. All labialized consonants shift to bilabials.
6. The lateral approximant l shifted to w.
7. The postalveolar affricates č ǯ ň š ł became c ʒ n s l unconditionally.
8. The palatals ć c̀ became č .
9. The voiceless uvular stop q changed to k when syllable-final.
10. Word-final č became s. čk čq etc > čč. Any other syllable-final č assimilates to the following consonant.
11. Any heterorganic stop/aff after a stop turned into a fricative.
12. The affricates c ʒ changed to s z when not after a high tone.
13. Voiced stops became voiceless when occurring before a high tone.

Thus the final consonant inventory was

Bilabials:            p   b   m   f   v   w         
Alveolars:            t   d   n   s       l  (c) (ʒ)             
Palataloids:          č                   y            
Velars:               k   ġ   ŋ   x   g
Uvulars:              q           h