Tropical Rim/Extension

TOTAL

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This is the group that was once called Paleo-Pabappa.

Animate Group I

1. pu: Pregnant women and epicenes; verbs of emotion.

   Becomes p- before vowel-initial stems.

2. pi: Adult females; worms.

   Becomes p- before vowel-initial stems and takes epicene verb agreement.

3. tə: Adult males; rabbits and hares.

   Becomes p- before vowel-initial stems and takes epicene verb agreement.

Note that the feminine prefix pi- is historically cognate to the m- group below, which by the time of paleo-Pabappa had come to be a category for children rather than women. In fact, the prefix was originally identical with mi- "milk; breast", but underwent a sound change due to being always used as a prefix whereas mi- could also appear in standalone form.

In addition to losing their vowels before vowel stems, these three stems disappear entirely before p-stems on the conditions that:

1. The p-stem is not another noun. (For example, one must say pipèpu "her crab", not *pèpu.)

Animate Group II

1. ni: Maidens, young girls; certain female body parts; ducklike birds.

   Becomes m- before stems beginning in u- and ń- before other vowel-initial stems.

2. mu: Young children; most other birds.

   Becomes m- before vowel-initial stems.; appears as mə- in a few words.

3. pe: Crustaceans; sea life.

   Becomes m- before vowel-initial stems.

Animate Group III

Nouns in this group must be padded with one of the human identifier prefixes in order to form disyllabic prefixes.

1. pa: Sheep and goats.
2. ńe: Snakes.
3. hə: Frogs, amphibians.

   Becomes f- before vowel-initial stems.

4. li: Turtles.
5. la: Mice and rodents.
6. ča: Flying insects.
7. ke: Cats.
8. po: Ants, crawling insects.

   Becomes p- before vowel-initial stems and takes epicene verb agreement.

"Po-" is historically identical to the prefix for pregnant women and epicenes, but was never of the same level on the animacy hierarchy. <---POSSIBLY JUST DELETE THIS ENTIRELY FROM ALL LANGUAGES

These prefixes can also be used to denote the habitats of the animals. e.g. ča = sky, hə = swamp, ke = forest, la & ńe = underground

Inanimate Group I

Most words in this group are words for plants or objects made from plants.

1. ši: Some types of trees.
2. hə: Corals.
3. ti: Flower blossoms.

   Contracts to t- before a vowel.

4. ma: Very tall grasses.
5. pe: Money; some grasses.
6. mu: Fruit; buildings.
7. me: Alcohol, soap, and mixed formulas.
8. fo: Some types of grass.
9. pu: Succulent fruit; grass, clover, small plants; round objects; some trees;
10. nə: Claws, sharp objects; certain fruits.
11. fu: Wind and air; claws and other hard body parts.

Inanimate Group II

This group contains body parts and certain things typically held close to one's person.

1. ti: Teeth.

   Contracts to t- before a vowel.

2. ko: Bones.
3. ni: Feminine hygiene products.
4. i: Edible body parts.
5. to: Blood and bodily humors.
6. pa: Clothes.
7. fo: Some words for clothes.
8. mi: Milk, inedible body parts.

The prefix mi- is historically identical with the feminine prefix pi-. The "teeth" prefix ti- is historically homophonous with, but not related to, the "flower blossom" prefix.

Inanimate Group III

This group contains landforms and other objects most usually found in the locative rather than as the agent or patient of a verb.

1. ə: Open places.
2. o: Furniture and land formations.
3. po: Oceanographic formations.
4. mu: Fruit; buildings.
5. pe: Ocean and sea.
6. ča: Tall trees; the sky.
7. pi: Water, weather.
8. me: Kingdoms and empires.
9. pu: Celestial objects.

The prefix ča- "trees; sky" is in fact a single morpheme even going back to the days of Mumba, and not a merger of a velar with a palatal.

Inanimate Group IV

This group contains handheld objects and alienable possessions.

1. yo: Handheld objects; coins.
2. ši: Certain other handheld objects.
3. ri: Some other handheld objects.
4. hə: Corals; still other handheld objects.
5. ke: Wheels.
6. pu: Round objects; arrows, weapons, and handheld tools.
7. a: Whips.

The prefix ke- can be used for large circular objects; yo- for small ones, and pu- for spheres.

Uses of noun classes

Note that some noun classes had little use as nouns; for example li- "turtle" was only used in a few words for turtles. Instead, they were productive primarily as verbs, such as "to walk slowly", "to be hard", etc.

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This is the group that was once called Subumpamese.

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. ī behind; used as a suffix after both -m and -n
8. ŋò with; next to; near
9. ga in front of
10. c̀e covering; standing over
11. tà to push on; used as a suffix after -n
12. 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.