Alöbi

Alöbi was a Northern Upic language spoken by the Öb people in T'ugü in the first millennium AGS.

Name
The name Alöbi was likely formed long before the first attestation of the language in writing in the 1st century AGS, evidenced by the use of the archaic genitive -i, yielding al-öbi "tongue of Öb (people)".

Prehistory
Alöbi descends from Proto-Öbic, a language brought to T'ugü by an unknown Upic people some time around the 3rd - 1st millennia BGS. This language diversified into perhaps several dialects in the 1st millennium BGS, with two primary groups of dialects having emerged by year zero, known as High and Low Alöbi, which would remain in contact for several subsequent centuries. Low Alöbi is the more populous group, spoken by the settled riverine populations of the lowlands, while High dialects were spoken by semi-nomadic people scattered around T'ugü.

Early literate stage
The first writing in T'ugü appears towards the end of the 1st century AGS, when writing, among other things, was brought to T'ugü by Xiyeru explorers. For the first few centuries, writing was sparsely found, existing primarily as a trading utility.

Late Alöbi
As trade and cultural contact increased, so did the spread of writing in T'ugü and the influence of the Xiri language on Low Alöbi. The term "Late Alöbi" is often used to describe the stage of Low Alöbi spoken c. 500 - 800 AGS, during the period of peak Xiyeru contact leading up to the Great Sickness and the resulting influx of Xiyeru refugees to T'ugü.

Alöbi underwent several phonological changes in this period, primarily motivated by Xiri influence, such as the intervocalic voicing of /t tʃ/ to [d dʒ], the nasalisation of vowels preceding coda nasal consonants, and the introduction of two new marginal phonemes /ɲ/ and /ɸ/, which were previously allophonic variants of /n/ and /x/ respectively.

The mixed language Möxali formed through bilingualism of Xiri and Late Alöbi in the nascent communities which would become the Lavondu culture.

The corpus of Alöbi literature is primarily from this period, in which the orthographic diversity that had evolved in T'ugü was consolidated into standardised writing systems.

Transitional Alöbi
The most spoken language in T'ugü in the 10th to 18th centuries AGS was Eubli, the historic continuation of the Late Alöbi language. By convention, Eubli is taken to be historically separated from Alöbi by some transitional stage, the common spoken language of the Öbic populace c. 800 AGS, which also developed into various other minor languages. The precise form of this language is uncertain since its deviation from the standard language was not recorded in writing until Eubli spelling reforms in the 12th and 13th centuries. Certain changes to the phonology, particularly of the vowel inventory, have be reconstructed, some examples of which are shown below:


 * Merger of word-final /ɑ e/ to *ə:
 * Late Alöbi bit'e [bitʼɛ] → *bit'ə → Eubli bit' [bitʼ] "egg"
 * Late Alöbi blixma [bliʃmɐ] → *blixmə → Eubli blišma [bliɕmə] "iridescent"
 * Unstressed vowel loss following an approximant /w l j/, likely first by shifting to *ə:
 * Late Alöbi qayox [ʔɑjɔʃ] → *qay(ə)x → Eubli aex [äɛ̯x] "clear weather"
 * Late Alöbi owik'  [owɪkʼ] → *ow(ə)k'  → Eubli ouk' [ou̯kʼ] "to change"
 * Vocalisation of coda /l/ to *w:
 * Late Alöbi ibyal [ibjɐɫ] → *ibyaw → Eubli ibyao [ibjäɔ̯] "to cross over, travel through"
 * Late Alöbi celcel [tʃeɫdʒɛɫ] → *cewjew → Eubli čeuǰeu [tɕøy̯dʑøy̯] "to arrive"
 * Formation of six diphthongs (*ew *aw *ow *ey *ay *oy) from vowel + glide and vowel + vowel sequences:
 * Late Alöbi aib [ɑɪb] → *ayb → Eubli aeb [äɛ̯b]
 * Late Alöbi yuek [juɛk] → *yoyk → Eubli yeik [jei̯k] "scaly fish"
 * Late Alöbi üyet'  [yjɛtʼ] → *eyt'  → Eubli eit' [ei̯tʼ] "to fear"
 * Late Alöbi xulab [ʃul̪ɐb] → *xowb → Eubli xoub [xou̯b] "to wrap up"
 * Loss of coda nasals, forming four nasalised vowels *in (← iN), *un (← uN, üN) ,*en (← eN), *on (← aN, oN, öN):
 * Late Alöbi anta [ɑ̃(n̪)d̪ɐ] → *ondə → Eubli od [ɔd̪] "open (as of a flower)"
 * Late Alöbi höten [ɸød̪ɛ̃(n̪)] → *föden → Eubli föde [ɸød̪ɛ] "first person plural"
 * Late Alöbi laüm [l̪ɑʏ̃(m)] → *lay → Eubli lae [l̪äɛ̯] "corner"
 * Late Alöbi wilig [wil̪ɪ̃(ŋ)] → *wew → Eubli weu [weu̯] "rod"

Dialects
Alöbi is divided into two major dialect clusters, High and Low Alöbi, named after the altitude of the geographical regions they are spoken. High Alöbi, spoken in the southern hills of T'ugü, tends to be more phonologically conservative, but lexically more innovative, with many compound words replacing older vocabulary retained in Low Alöbi.

Coronal consonants
The consonants c c' x are pronounced [tʃ tʃʼ ʃ] respectively, while the approximant y is palatal [j] but forms a natural group with the post-alveolars when considering phonotactics.

Late in Alöbi's history, the consonants t c were voiced to [d dʒ] between two voiced segments, often romanised as d j in transcriptions of Alöbi from around 300 - 600 AGS.

Dorsal consonants
In the Low Alöbi dialects, g k k' h are uvularised to [ɴ q qʼ χ] next to a [ɑ] within the same syllable. High Alöbi has no phonemic glottal stop, instead featuring contrastive uvular plosives /q q'/, though still exhibits k k'  > q q' next to a as a phonological rule.

The consonant g is most typically a nasal following similar [ŋ~ɴ] allophony, though a fricative quality [ɣ] is found in some High dialects.

Labial fricative
The labial fricative f did not exist natively in Alöbi, being introduced via Xiri loans around 100 - 300 AGS. By 400 AGS, older instances of hw and h next to u and ü had merged into f, which at this time was pronounced bilabial [ɸ].

Vowels
In Low Alöbi, unstressed vowels are slightly centralised and, with the exception of a, more open than when stressed. Low Alöbi also slightly lengthens stressed vowels, while in High Alöbi the vowels i ü u are always pronounced long. A table of typical vowel qualities is shown below: Many common vocabulary words have dialect variants in which some instances of Low Alöbi i [i~ɪ] correspond to High Alöbi e [ɪ]. Such alternation originates from each groups undergoing different vowel mergers: *i *ī > i [i~ɪ] in Low Alöbi and *i *e > e [ɪ] in High Alöbi. Some examples are shown below:


 * PÖb *binem "bitter fish sauce" → LA binem [ˈbiˑnəm] ~ HA penem [ˈpɪnɪm]
 * PÖb *inki "younger sibling" → LA igki [ˈiˑŋkɪ] ~ HA enke [ˈɪŋkɪ]
 * PÖb *cic'ī "red clay" → LA cic'i [ˈtʃiˑtʃʼɪ] ~ HA cec'i [ˈtʃɪtʃʼiː]

Diphthongs
In the 6th century AGS, sequences of vowels and coda glides began to collapse into a system of six diphthongs, laying the foundation for what would become the vowel system of the later Eubli language.

Phonotactics
The syllable structure is (C)(A)V(C) where C is any consonant, V is any vowel and A is an approximant /w l j/. An approximant A can only occur if the onset consonant is a non-approximant with a different place of articulation to A. Syllables with no onset consonant are common and as a result, there are many examples of vowel hiatus. If two identical vowels meet at a syllable boundary, a glottal stop /ʔ/ is inserted between them. Every word has one stressed syllable which falls on the first syllable of the stem.

Grammar
Alöbi has fairly agglutinative morphology and makes use of many case markers, derivational affixes and compounding to derive words. Four grammatical numbers are distinguished: singular, dual, paucal and plural.

There are two separate classes of predicate in Alöbi, statives and ambitransitive "true" verbs. Both classes necessarily take one sole argument, but verbs can optionally take other objects.

Alöbi is generally an ergative language, though the morphosyntactic system could be described as a type of tripartite alignment featuring absolutive, ergative and oblique adverbial cases. There are also some non-ergative features, such as personal pronouns following a nominative-accusative alignment and certain causative verbs which inflect like transitives, only take a single argument marked in the ergative case, and act like intransitives in certain syntactic operations like phrase embedding and changing word order.

The word order is strictly verb-final but otherwise fairly free, though typically uses a head-final structure.

Xiric loans
Alöbi loaned many words from Xiri when the speakers of the two languages began trading around the first or second century AGS. Most of the borrowed vocabulary consists of material cultural terminology, some examples of which with the approximate pronunciations c. 400 AGS are shown in the table below. The ubiquitous Xiri transitive verb prefix fa- was carried into Alöbi as a derivational prefix fo- forming verbs from roots with the meaning "to enact or create [noun/state]". This prefix emerged just before [ɸ], previously a rounded allophone of h, became phonemic, and may have originally been loaned as ho- [xʷo- ~ ɸo-]. Also around this time, the native Öbic root + affix derivational pattern dropped out of use, fossilising disyllabic stems, so fo- may have been one of the last productive derivational prefixes. Some examples of fo- verbs with corresponding nouns using the same reanalysed root are shown in the table below. Some words appear to have been influenced by the grammar and vocabulary of Xiri, though are not direct loans. Some examples of such words are shown in the table below, along with the original terms which were replaced or remodelled.