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| | | ''This page has been wiped in preparation for the introduction of a new set of languages descended from proto-Dreamlandic.'' |
| The '''Subumpamese languages''' are the languages spoken in the eleven states of [[Subumpam]]. They split off from the parent language, called [[Tapilula]], around 600 AD and continued to be spoken until the defeat of Subumpam in the [[Vegetable War]] of 2668 AD.
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| ==Early history==
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| '''Proto-Subumpamese''' split off from the [[Gold language|Gold]] branch of the Tapilula family around the year 600 AD. At this time, the only other Gold speakers were those living in Paba; those who settled Nama spoke different languages. Proto-Subumpamese had already gone through all of the vowel changes that characterized the Gold language of the year 1900. Therefore, the vowel inventories of Gold and proto-Subumpamese are identical and in nearly all words they will agree with each other, despite the 1300-year gap between their maturation dates.
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| However, proto-Subumpamese branched off from Gold before the deletion of all word-initial vowels, and therefore there are some words that were one syllable longer in proto-Subumpamese than in Gold. This also means that proto-Subumpamese retained the Tapilula noun classifier system, which in the Gold branch was wrecked by the deletion of initial vowels. Subumpamese also lacks the labialized consonants that were created by this shift, although it preserves the unusual labialized alveolars that came down from Tapilula.
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| Note that the vowel changes above are responsible for the growth of closed syllables, and that proto-Subumpamese therefore has closed syllables wherever Gold also has them.
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| The only consonant changes that occurred between Tapilula and proto-Subumpamese are the palatalization of /k/ (not /ḳ/) before /i/, and the shift of /f/ (not /hʷ/) to /þ/ (often spelled ''ṣ''). All of the other changes that came to characterize the Gold language occurred after the split.
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| Therefore the consonant phonology of proto-Subumpamese was:
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| /p b m þ t d n l tʷ dʷ nʷ č j k ḳ ŋ h g hʷ gʷ/
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| Of note is that /gʷ/ was very frequently pronounced [w] but patterned as if it were a labiovelar. The only ejective in the language is ''ḳ''.
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| ===Phonology===
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| Overall the language is "soft" and not intimidating, like its neighbor [[Kava]], and to a lesser extent also like [[Pabappa]] and [[Poswa]]. It shifted all of its labialized consonants to pure labials, e.g. /kʷ/ > /p/, and then shifted its plain velars to palatals and sometimes on to coronals. Thus there are few dorsal consonants remaining in the language. However, the voiceless ejective /ḳ/ was immune to the second of these changes, and thus survived as a plain velar in the classical form of the language.
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| It is also unusual in that for most of its history, it had an /r/ but no /l/ sound, the opposite pattern to most og the languages around it. However, [[Babakiam]] had neither of these sounds (the 'r' in Poswa and Pabappa is a uvular approximant.)
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| ====Vowels====
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| /a e i o u ā ē ī ō ū/
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| Tones have been eliminated, but the ā tone survives as vowel length. Macrons are also used to tell diphthongs like '''ūi''' (/uj/) from simple sequences like '''ui''' (/ui/, often [wi]).
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| ;NOTE RECAST THIS AS SPLITTING OFF C 1200 AD OR EARLIER. USE EXACTLY THE SAME SOUND CHANGES.
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| ====Consonants====
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| /p b m f v w/ for labials; /t d n s z r c ʒ/ for dentals/alveolars; /č ǯ š ž j/ for postalveolars/palatals; and /k ŋ/ for the velars. The vowel /i/, be it short or long, palatalizes any alveolars before it, and therefore the palatal series can be considered to instead be /cj ʒj sj zj j/, reducing the number of consonants by four. Voiced stops and fricatives are fairly rare. In syllable-final position, the allowable sounds are /m n ŋ/, /t d n s z c ʒ/, and /k/. No vowels were deleted, so any final consonant in Subumpamese was a final consonant in Gold as well.
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