Kuma-Koban
| Old Verat Verát | |
| Spoken in: | Terek Highlands (Teregvérga) |
| Conworld: | Khelivega Continuity |
| Total speakers: | Roughly 300 Thousand |
| Genealogical classification: | Indo-European
|
| Basic word order: | SOV |
| Morphological type: | Inflecting |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Split-S |
| Writing system: | |
| Created by: | |
| S. G. McCabe | c2000 CE |
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:
|
→ 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 and Lithuanian
| 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
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.
