Kuma-Koban

Kuma-Koban is an Indo-European language spoken in the North Caucasus during the bronze-age, principally in the area around the Kuma-Manych depression. Nominally, it belongs to an independent branch of the IE family, though many characteristics point to a pre-Proto-Greek or Anatolian origin.

Culture

The Kuma-Koban people show material practices consistent with those of the Srubna Culture, with influence from the older Koban-Culture.

Phonology

Kuma-Koban is rather conservative in terms of its phonological development away from PIE. It shows twelve plosive to six non-plosive consonants, and six vowel qualities and two lengths.

The langauge only displays two fricatives, of which /h/ has a rather limited distribution, found only word-initially and between /a/ (for good historical reasons: /h/ < PIE *h2 or, more rarely, *h3).

Major Historical Developments

There are four main historical developments from PIE to Kuma-Koban which deserve special consideration. These are, in their presumed order of occurrence, the preservation of PIE *h₂ and *h₃ as consinants before *e, the vocalization of syllabic resonants, the splitting of the labiovelar series, and Grassmann's law.

Laryngeal Preservation

Kuma-Koban, unlike any other language outside Anatolia, preserves the PIE laryngeals *h₂ and *h₃ as /h/ before *e. They show the same vowel-coloring property as in other languages, changing *e to /a/ and /o/ respectively.

*h₂ab-ōl-	→	haboːl-	"fruit"
*h₂euh₂-os	→	haːu-os	"grandfather"
*h₃estH-	→	hostə-	"bone"

The laryngeals then merge completely, and are preserved as a single vowel /ə/ between consonants and at word-boundaries:

*h₃rēǵ-	→	əreːɟ-	"chief"
*ph₂-tēr-	→	pʰəteːr-	"father"

Syllabic Resonants

Syllabic resonants, both alone and with laryngeals (i.e. the "long syllabics") behave much as they do in Sanskrit or Lithuanian. The vowel which the syllable takes depends on the preceding consonant: we see /u/ after labiovelars, and /ə/ elsewhere.

PIE forms and KK Reflexes

	C_C	(C.)C_V	Cʷ_C	(C.)Cʷ_V
*rH	əːr	ər	uːr	ur
*lH	əːl	ə	uːl	ul
*r	ər	r	ur	r
*l	əl	l	ul	l
*mH	əː	əm	uː	um
*nH	əː	ən	uː	un
*m	ə	(ə)m	ə	(u)m
*n	ə	(ə)n	ə	(u)n

Labiovelars

At a relatively early stage in its development, Kuma-Koban lost the labiovelars as a phonemic series: *kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ split into plain labials and plain velars, conditioned on the roundness of nearby vowels. When a labiovelar is preceded immediately by *u or *ū, or followed by any round vowel, it will lose its lip-rounding feature to become a plain velar. This also occurs before *s. Otherwise, the labiovelars become plain labials.

Conditioned Splitting of Labiovelars

*kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ	→	/k g gʰ/	/_[V+Round] /_s /u(ː)_
*kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ	→	/p b bʰ/	elsewhere

Grassmann's Law

This is a sound law governing the distribution of aspirated plosives within a root, as seen in Greek, Sanskrit, and Kuma-Koban.