Cueva () is an extinct Chocoan language of Panama. Only around 50 words are known in the language. It is often misclassified within linguistic studies. The Cueva people experienced a significant population decline between 1510 and 1535 due to conflicts, diseases, and the effects of Spanish colonization. By the 17th and 18th centuries, the Guna and Embera had migrated into the lands of the former Cueva speaking polities, repopulating the area.
History The Cueva were organized into at least 17 polities in 1515, all of them friendly with the Spaniards, all of whom presided over their own province and people.
Classification Loukotka mistakenly identified a Guna vocabulary from the Darién as Cueva, leading to confusion of Cueva with Guna in subsequent literature, with some authors reporting that Cueva was a dialect of or ancestral to the Guna language.
Loewen, Quesada Pacheco, and Constenla Umaña & Margery Peña have suggested a connection between Cueva and the Chocoan family, with some classifying Cueva as a Chocoan language.
Citing the linguistic diversity in the western half of the Isthmus, Calvo and Arias argue that Cueva could have been a lingua franca to connect an area with large linguistic diversity of both Chibchan and Chocoan languages because it includes cognates with both the Guna and Embera languages.
Phonology A reconstruction of Cueva phonology is presented below.
Consonants BilabialAlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalOcclusivevoiceless voiced(tense?)FricativeAffricateNasal LateralTapGlide
Vowels FrontCentralBackunroundedroundedHigh Mid Low The vowel is posited based on phonetic correspondences between the Cueva letter with the Woun Meu vowel , such as Cueva 'woman' with Woun Meu 'id.'.
Phonotactics The most common syllable structures in attested Cueva words are V, VV, VC, CV, CVV, CVC, and CCV.
Morphology
Affixes Attested prefixes in Cueva include and , and suffixes include , , and .
Vocabulary Only 50 words of Cueva are known, recorded by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in the early 16th century.
Influence on modern languages The word chicha, referring to a fermented beverage commonly consumed in South America, is thought to originate from Cueva, as is the word Panama, said to mean 'fishing grounds, fishermen'.
Swadesh list A Swadesh list of Cueva words is presented below. +Swadesh list of CuevaNo.GlossCueva7this32small, 36woman37man40wife45fish60grass65bone77tooth 93to eat154sea183new185good198far
References
Bibliography