Kava

This article is mostly about the historical kingdom. For the present day Kava, see Nama#Kava.

Kava is the name of a kingdom in the far southeast of Nama. Pavbwa is the name of a city settled by Subumpamese and Andanese-type people during a time in which Nama did not have control of the area. Its etymology is similar to "Baeba Swamp" and indeed it is a mostly a swamp. But it was the capital of a very powerful nation, Kava, during its time. Its people called it "Lun" rather than Pavbwa; their descendants embraced Naman culture when they were eventually overhwlemed, and then later on, Poswob cutlure when Poswobs began taking over Nama. They existed as Kava for a short time, roughly 3125 to 3348.

Sound changes

See Lenian languages.

Daughter languages

Ideally, none of these should have more than 10 changes, but Dreamlandic may have more because of an early shift that triggers others.

Proto-Kava (3138?) to Pisi

The date of this language might actually be as far back as 3100 AD, perhaps 3138 AD witj tje founding of Yeisu Kasu. This might be the language of the Raspara.

1. After a high tone, voiced fricatives became voiced stops. Thus v ž g became b ǯ ġ.
2. Voiced fricatives in syllable-final position, or between vowels, became vocalized. Thus v ž g became w y ʕ. Here, the /ʕ/ is a stand-in symbol indicating a lengthening of the preceding vowel.
3. The sequences ʕa ʕi ʕu became a yi wu. The same /ʕ/ also changed to /y/ or /w/ when following these same vowels, but the spelling was not changed.
4. The vowel sequences aa əə became ā ə̄.
5. The falling diphthongs ai əi au əu changed to ē ē ō ō.
6. The vowel sequences ia iə ua uə changed to e e o o, unless one member of the sequence was long.
7. The sequences mp nt nč nć ŋk ŋq changed to the voiced stops b d ǯ ɟ ġ ġ.
8. Syllables were front-loaded whenever possible.
9. Syllable-final fricatives disappeared, lengthening the vowel they had followed.
10. The uvular stop q became k.

By the year 3348, proto-Kava had evolved into a language called Pisi, which split into a daughter language called Meromo, spoken by exiles, and the future of mainline Pisi.

Proto-Kava (3138?) to Super-Dreamlandic

See edit history for "pmslkrtn" target phonology. This is a complete reworking.

This is the superstratum language of Dreamland, *unless* the settlers simply adopt an aboriginal language.

1. After a high tone, voiced fricatives became voiced stops. Thus v ž g became b ǯ ġ.
2. Voiced fricatives in syllable-final position, or between vowels, became vocalized. Thus v ž g became w y ʕ. Here, the /ʕ/ is a stand-in symbol indicating a lengthening of the preceding vowel.
3. The sequences ʕa ʕi ʕu became a yi wu. The same /ʕ/ also changed to /y/ or /w/ when following these same vowels, but the spelling was not changed.
4. The vowel sequences aa əə became ā ə̄.

   NOTE ON POLITICS: This is where the mixing happens.

5. Prenasalized stops are voiced.
6. ň ń > ň.
7. l > l.
8. š ś č ć > š; ž ź ʒ ǯ > ž
9. k q > k.
10. g h > silence (Ø).
11. Possibly k ŋ (even the new /k/) > š ň, due to allophony.

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

History

See here.