Subumpamese languages

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.

Sound changes

See Lenian languages.

Labiovelars occurred mostly in the vicinity of /i u/; each branch developed them in different ways:

1. shift to velars, which were almost in complementary distribution.
2. shift to rounded bilabials.
3. a split shift combining the above two options depending on further conditions.
4. retention, with vowel mergers creating new minimal pairs.

Later developments

All Subumpamese languages were submerged by the immigration of Merar (Tarpabappa) speakers in the year 2674 AD. Descendants of Kava survived only because they had earlier fled Subumpam.

Grammar

Morphonology

Vowel harmony

Pretonic /e~ə~o/ are in harmony with the tonic vowel, but every morpheme has a basic form that appears when the tonic vowel is one of /a i u/. Also, after a labialized consonant, only /o/ appears in this position, and this causes any vowels earlier in the word to also become /o/ regardless of the tonic vowel. Note that this harmony persists in Subumpamese despite the fact that the schwa vowel /ə/ is a high vowel, not a mid vowel. Also note that sequences like /kʷe/ do still occur in the stressed syllable and in every syllable thereafter; the harmony rule only applies to syllables that occur before the stress.

This pattern is responsible for alternations like tekʷēł "his bone" vs. tokʷŏlo "his fern".

Verbal morphology

Verb prefixes indicate both the agent and the patient; for example, in tobòči "he marries her", the prefix tob- indicates a male agent and a female patient. This arose from the stacking of agent and patient classifiers; most other Lenian languages mark only the agent.

Person marking is redundant, since Subumpamese retains the pronouns lost in other branches. The suffixes -k- (1st person) and -h- (2nd person) attach to the oblique stem of the verb, whereas 3rd person is marked by no suffix.

Other inflections

Kava was isolated from the Gold language for most of its history, and therefore took most of its influence from the grammatically dissimilar 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.

These auxiliary verbs were suffixes, not separate words. Therefore, they functioned like case markers, and were just like those of Gold except that they were not fusional and never carried the word's stress. They included:

ADVERBIALS

1. si ~ ši (genitive)
2. su ~ hʷù (accusative)
3. hà to be changed by

LOCATIVES

1. -m(ə) (locative of place)
2. n(ə) (locative of motion)
3. ma on top of; used as a suffix after -m
4. mo on top of; used as a suffix after -m
5. pì supported by; used as a suffix after -m
6. ši underneath; used as a suffix after -m
7. ŋò with; next to; near
8. ga in front of
9. c̀e covering; standing over
10. tà to push on; used as a suffix after -n
11. là to pull on; used as a suffix after -n

Of these, only the genitive is cognate to it's counterpart in Gold; the other resemblances are due to convergent evolution.

There was also a new copula verb, tò.

Morphosyntactic sound changes

Nouns ending in -x usually dropped the -x because it disappeared before the three most common case endings. Thus, for example, *pipēx changed to pipē "ocean; salt water".

However, in some nouns, it survived because these nouns were originally strong.

Nouns

Subumpamese nouns have a true noun class system, not a gender system like that of the Gold language, and it is very similar to that of Andanese. Subumpam is a fairly diverse empire. The climate ranges from subtropical and nearly tropical in the south to the cold and rugged mountains of the north, whose people are much poorer than those of the tropics but also much better protected from foreign invasions. In the mountains, most people speak Andanic languages, a family which is related to Subumpamese but much more conservative.

The richer natural environment of the south has led its people to prosper and bring cultural innovations into the north, as well as a more diverse cuisine flavored with tropical fruits such as pineapples and coconuts as well as large, deep-water fish such as tuna.

Noun class prefixes are augmented to CVC before vowel-initial stems. Some of these have bled into the stems and created new roots beginning with the extra consonant, which then appear in other noun classes.

Note that /s/ appears whenever any primordial /h/ is bordered by /i~e/ and /u/ in either direction.

Strong nouns

A small number of nouns retained their case marking; nominal complexity increased west to east. This applied to the whole sprachbund, shading from Kava with no inflections to Paleo-Pabappa where the entire vocabulary was strong. However, the nearby Eastern Subumpamese languages still used weak noun morphology for the majority of their vocabulary.