Old Nambāno

Old Nambāno, also known as Early Nambāno or Proto-Nambāno, is the ancestor of most language varieties within the Nambāno dialect cluster, believed to be the oldest Koyanic language spoken in Qnōp'.

Palatal obstruent
The palatal obstruent *j was likely a fricative [ʝ] or affricate [ɟʝ], though may have already been pronounced as an approximant [j] as it is most typically in Nambāno.

Vowels
Long vowels derive primarily from compensatory lengthening via two sources:


 * Loss of coda *h, itself a merger of older Proto-Namb *f and *x.
 * Loss of coda *r.

Five of the six vowels additionally had nasalised forms, *ã *ẽ *ĩ *õ *ũ. These resulted from loss of nasals at the end of words and before older fricatives and nasals, also lengthening the vowel, with the nasalised form of *ɨ merging with *ã. The bilabial nasal *m, however, was retained in these environments. Vowels before coda *n were likely also pronounced with nasalisation, but were not lengthened and simply represent allophones of the short vowels.

Only four sequences of two vowels are found in Old Nambāno, *ei, *ou, *io and *uo. These may have acted as diphthongs, evidenced by the fact that they are usually reflected by single vowels in descendent languages.

A table of vowel reflexes in Nambāno languages is shown below:

Phonotactics
Old Nambāno had a maximal CCVC syllabic structure, with various constraints placed on the onset cluster and coda consonant.

Onset
Medial nasals in the onset could not have the same place of articulation as a preceding plosive, thus *bn- and *tŋʷ- are allowed onset clusters while *bm- and *tn- are forbidden.

The velar consonants *g *k *h *ŋ could occur preceding any vowel except *u, where they are neutralised into a labialised velar + *ɨ. These exact pronunciation of these syllables is not reconstructible, e.g. it is not known whether *gʷɨ was actually [gʷɨ] or [gu], but it is reconstructed as such due to the later nambāno form gua [gʷa] reflecting the regular *ɨ > /a/ shift seen elsewhere.

Coda
Obstruents could occur in coda position, though not at the end of words, but the labialised velars *gʷ *kʷ *hʷ *ŋʷ were not allowed in the coda.

Consonant clusters
Consonant clusters most typically arise at morpheme boundaries, since most underlying stems end in a consonant which resolves into one of the five rhymes when placed before an obstruent. Various morphophonological processes of assimilation limited the possible *-BB- clusters that were possible that could occur across syllable boundaries. These processes can be sorted into progressive and regressive assimilation:


 * Progressive assimilation
 * The velar fricative *h(ʷ) assimilates to any preceding consonant, e.g. *-th- *-rh- *-ŋh- > *-tt- *-rr- *-ŋŋ-.
 * *hʷ additionally causes a preceding bilabial consonant to shift to a labialised velar, thus *-mhʷ- *-bhʷ- *-phʷ- > *-ŋŋʷ- *-ggʷ- *-kkʷ-.
 * Regressive assimilation
 * Plosives assimilate to following nasals of the same place of articulation, e.g. *-pm- *-dn- *-kŋ- > *-mm- *-nn- *-ŋŋ-.
 * Labial stops *b *p *m assimilate to following velar stops, e.g. *-bg- *-pk- *-mgʷ- > *-gg- *-kk- *-ŋgʷ-.
 * Lingual nasals *n *ŋ assimilate to the place of articulation of any following consonant, e.g. *-nk- *-ŋn- *-ŋb- > *-ŋk- *-nn- *-mb-. Note that *m only assimilated to velar consonants as per the rule above, thus sequences like *-mt- and *-ml- were allowed.
 * Lingual plosives *d *t *g *k assimilate to the place of articulation and voicedness of any following plosives, *s and *j, e.g. *-dp- *-gs- *-tj- > *-pp- *-ss- *-jj-.

A full table of possible intrasyllabic clusters of two consonants subject to these rules is shown below:

Number
The basic form of all nouns is the "uncounted" form, which can represent a generic plural or generic reference to a type or category. Most nouns were countable, exhibiting a "counted" form of certain grammatical cases, which was singular by default but could take modifiers to specify quantity, such as numerals.

Case
Nouns have five basic cases: absolutive, accusative, oblique, comitative and relative. A sixth case, the possessive, appears on exclusively animate nouns.

Verb prefix
Old Nambāno verbs could take an optional prefix consisting of two parts:


 * Relative tense marker, either non-past *r-, past *hʷ-, or unmarked *∅-
 * Emphasis marker, either generic *-ō-/*-or- or emphatic *-ã-/*-ãn-/*-an-

When not marked for tense, the generic prefix is used for conditionals and periphrastic future tense, while the emphatic prefix takes a negative meaning.

The generic prefix can be dropped if the temporal context is already established.