Proto-Namb language

Proto-Namb (abbreviated PNmb), also known as Proto-Northern Gäj (PNGäj) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Nambāno and Arklobu languages, which together form the Northern branch of the "Gäj" languages.

Consonants
The alveolar plosives *d *t were likely dental [d̪ t̪].

Some analyses of Proto-Namb consider the sequences *gw *kw *xw *ŋw to be a class of singular labialized velar consonants.

Monophthongs
The vowel system of Proto-Namb features a typical five-vowel system, *a *e *i *o *u, in which the vowels *a *e *o *u had additional mutated forms, transcribed *ä *ë *ö *ü respectively. These typically arose as allophones due to *i in the next syllable. In the earliest internally reconstructible form of Proto-Namb, sometimes called Pre-Proto-Namb, the distinction between plain vowels and their mutated forms was entirely morphologically conditioned. In the later stage of the language which is the true ancestor of all Namb languages, loss of *i and *y in certain environments, as well as analogical extension in forms which never had a following *i, yielded phonemic mutated vowels in other phonological environments.

Many Namb languages exhibit separate shifts between plain and mutated vowels, cementing their phonemic status. *e and *ë are reconstructed as separate sounds, suggesting that *e likely had a central or back quality [ə~ɤ]. The other vowel pairs are usually interpreted similarly, with a back or central quality in the plain vowel and a fronted form in the mutated vowel:


 * a e o u [a~ɑ ə~ɤ o u]
 * ä ë ö ü [æ e ø y]

It has also been suggested that *ä *ë *ö *ü were not fronted, but rather had an advanced tongue root, as is exhibited in Qʼachkav vowel harmony. This theory posits the following approximate vowel qualities:


 * a e o u [ɑ ɛ ɔ ʊ]
 * ä ë ö ü [a e o u]

Diphthongs
In addition to the monophthongs, the vowel sequences *ie and *ue are reconstructed to have acted like singular diphthongal vowels. These diphthongs derive primarily from three sources:


 * Proto-Gäj *ī and *ū
 * *i and *u before *r
 * *i and *u + any mid or open vowel (*e *ë *a *ä *o *ö)

Their reflexes in Nambāno suggest that *ue also had an i-mutated form, transcribed *üe, though it does not have distinct reflexes in other Namb languages so is not easily reconstructible.

Stem alternation
Proto-Gäj featured a pattern of grammatical alternation where stem-final consonants in certain grammatical forms would mutate according to the rule:


 * -b -d -j -g -r -l -y -w →  -p -t -c -k -h -∅ -∅ -∅

In Namb, this process developed further due to the loss of *h, palatal assimilation, and i-mutation, whereby the vowels *a *e *o *u were shifted to *ä *ë *ö *ü respectively in the presence of *i in the next syllable.

These changes yielded the following mutation rules which generally apply in Proto-Namb:


 * -b -d -j -g -x →  -p -t -c -c -ç
 * -r -l -y -w →  -∅
 * -a- -e- -o- -u- →  -ä- -ë- -ö- -ü-

This mutation is not restricted to a single lexical class, the relative noun stem and the infinitive of a verb both exhibit this same mutation for example.

This is the result of inflectional morphology coincidentally causing multiple independent sound changes to frequently occur together, and the compound phonological variation which arose becoming recognised as a common pattern. This separated a stem into two distinct forms strengthened by semantic and morphological analogy. For example, the Proto-Gäj infinitive suffix *-xi triggered mutation of the previous vowel in the stem and blocked the voicing of a stem-final plain plosive which had become voiced elsewhere. In nominal inflection, the genitive suffix *-(r)i (< *-z/si) also triggered the same ablaut and consonant mutation, as did the ablative suffixes *-çi and *-θi.

Many paradigms of related forms which partially or inconsistently mutated the stem were analogically levelled into systems based around a singular mutated stem. For example, the genitive singular suffix *-(r)ax (< *-z/sær̥) blocked voicing of obstruents, but would not have fronted the stem vowel. By analogy with other genitive suffixes and similar forms, this suffix also attached to the mutated stem, e.g. *öci, *öcax "stone-ɢᴇɴ.ᴘʟ, stone-ɢᴇɴ.ꜱɢ".

The semantic relationships between forms may also have influenced this analogy, for example in the nominal cases. There may have been a semantic split into more active or dominant roles like the possessive, genitive and ablative which happened to use the mutated stem, and passive/recipient roles like the absolutive, oblique and lative cases using the basic stem. In such a system, the ergative case would likely be more associated with the active roles, and this may be part of what led to Proto-Namb using the mutated stem for the ergative case, unlike the other Gäj languages.

In addition to the regularly related basic and mutated stems, some grammatical forms took a stem with an alternate vowel to the others, essentially giving three different stem forms for a lexical item in general. Zero-derivation makes this especially clear, as the same stems can lend themselves to unrelated grammatical forms in different lexical classes, for example those shown in the table below:

Mutated ergative
The fronted vowel became the most important characteristic feature of the mutated stem in Namb, evidenced by other morphological changes revolving around the ablaut. For example, consider the Proto-Gäj inanimate ergative suffix *-ir, which triggered voicing of the stem-final obstruent, yielding forms like *pwób-ir from PKn *pwə́p-īrx₃ "moss-ᴇʀɢ". In Proto-Namb, this suffix additionally triggered vowel mutation, so *pwób-ir should be expected to yield *kwöb-ier, but instead the form *kwöp-ier is reconstructed. This indicates that this forms was changed by analogy with other mutated stem forms which usually front the vowel and mutate the final consonant together, i.e. *kwöp-.

The same analogical process also took place in the countable inflection, with vowel-fronting triggered by Proto-Gäj ergative singular and plural suffixes *-i and *-ihæx respectively. Barring a few irregular exceptions, this analogy firmly placed the ergative case into the mutated stem category in the Namb languages, distinguishing them from other Gäj languages which use the basic stem for the ergative. Ergative suffixation is thought to have acted more like a clitic in many early Koyanic languages, disappearing entirely in some branches, and this may have been crucial to the change of base stem.

Loss of *-i- on the ergative singular suffix appears to have generated the first phonemic mutated vowels in Proto-Namb, since they remained in environments in which they would not have arisen allophonically. For example, compare *nämi "father-ᴇʀɢ.ᴘʟ" with its singular form, which was likely *nämax rather than *nämiax. Similarly, the ergative plural *-(i)x saw loss of *-i- when attaching to vowel-final stems, c.f. *çoa "crab-ᴀʙꜱ.ꜱɢ", *çö "bird-ᴇʀɢ.ᴘʟ".

A similar analogical process appears to have extended the fully mutated stem with the fronted vowel to the genitive singular *-(r)ax and much rarer possessives *-n(u) and *-n(u)rax, yielding forms like *näm-rax, *nän-nu and *nän-nuerax.

Nouns
Proto-Namb, like most other Gäj languages, features two alternating forms of many nominal inflectional suffixes, depending on whether the stem ends in a consonant or a vowel. The suffixes attach to one of three stem forms, called the absolutive, oblique and relative stems. The absolutive stem can be thought of as the basic underlying form while the relative stem is the form with the aforementioned stem mutation. While the absolutive and relative stem are regularly related, the oblique stem, used only for the oblique case, can feature irregular variation, but appears to have been in the process of regularising within the history of Proto-Namb. For example, *xela "person" has the oblique case *xalux, with the change of *e to *a not uncommon, but completely unpredictable, while the regularised form *xelux is also reconstructible and reflected by some languages.

Grammatical number
Proto-Namb features two true grammatical numbers, singular and plural, which have different inflectional forms and corresponding verb affixes. Additionally, there is a "numberless" category, which is not strictly a grammatical number, but a form of a noun which carries no number and cannot be modified by quantifiers. When numbered and numberless nouns appear together within a discourse, the numberless noun typically has an indirect or adjunct role. Numberless nouns can be the direct object of a verb, though it is not known whether the verb was marked for a singular or plural subject in such a case.

Mass nouns appear only in the numberless form, typically representing things like substances, emotions and weather events.

Some nouns have a suppletive numberless form, such as *adera "human", which has the plural *adere "humans" but numberless *gacmafor "humanity" rather than the expected **adror. Likewise, **gacmafa and gacmafe are similarly ungrammatical.

Case
The table below shows every suffix usually reconstructed as forming the Proto-Namb case system, with alternating forms on consonant / vowel final stems shown as such. Note that due to a regular process of neutralisation, the suffixes *-a, *-amar and *-ax took the forms *-e, *-emar and *-ex respectively when attaching to an absolutive stem ending in *i or *u.

The ergative and genitive cases were almost completely merged in Proto-Namb, only vowel-final stems distinguished them and many were regularised throughout the history of the language.

The oblique and ablative cases were strictly unmarked for grammatical number, but were almost always accompanied by a postposition which sometimes marked number.

The possessive case was reserved for animate nouns and generally associated with human possessors, though could appear on non-human animal referents as a form of personification. Unlike the genitives, the possessive suffixes retained their initial consonant *-n- in all circumstances.

Some examples of nominal inflection are shown in the tables below. Though most countable nouns are animate, inanimate nouns can also be countable.

Unique nouns
Certain temporal and spatial nouns, as well as uniquely named entities like deities, celestial bodies and months, fall into a special category of "unique" nouns. Many of these were derived from the Proto-Koyanic inanimate locative *-tʰul and ablative *-tʰīl, with *-tʰ (later *-f) reanalysed as part of the stem in Namb. Unique nouns take numberless inflectional forms, but are treated as singular by verb agreement, and additionally use the oblique suffix *-xu for the accusative case, lacking the typical *-ax.

Quantitative nouns
Quantifiers are a special lexical category which are mostly used as adjectives for quantification and comparison of nouns, though can stand alone as nouns themselves. All quantifiers are grammatically plural, even those which are semantically singular. This means that they take plural inflection, have no oblique or ablative case, and as a result can not be used in indirect syntactic roles.

Numerals fall into the quantifier category and additionally have fully merged the ergative and genitive cases, as shown in the table below.

Qualitative nouns
Proto-Namb does not have a distinct lexical or syntactic class of adjectives, any noun can act as an adjective modifying another noun marked with the same case and number within a phrase. However, many nouns are "qualitative", meaning they semantically refer primarily to a quality rather than an object, but are still fundamentally noun-like. For example, the qualitative noun *miba means "dark thing" in the singular and *mibe "dark things" in the plural, while the numberless form *mibor can mean "dark stuff" or refer to the quality of darkness itself. Note that this latter usage is different to a measure noun, which is an uncountable noun referring to the intensity of the quality and often derived from a qualitative noun e.g. *mipilor "darkness (how dark something is)".

Irregular nouns
Other than some suppletive numberless forms and irregularity in the oblique stem, nominal inflection is highly regular across the case paradigm. The very few irregularities which do exist are almost exclusively variation between the absolutive and relative stems, e.g. *xela "person" has the absolutive stem *xel-, and not unusual irregular oblique stem *xal-, but the relative stem is *çi- rather than the expected **xë-.

Verbs
Proto-Namb verbs have four primary forms: gerund, indicative, subjunctive and infinitive. The indicative and subjunctive each take a set of four suffixes which agree with the subject: first person singular, first person plural, second person and third person.

The final vowel before the suffix *-nor in the gerund form of a verb is its stem vowel. The stem vowel is unmodified in the indicative, takes the i-mutated form in the infinitive, and can have an alternate form in the subjunctive. For example, the verb *lednor "give" has the stem vowel *-e-, indicative stem *led-, subjunctive stem *lid- and infinitive *lëci.

There are five alternation classes, shown in the tables below. ¹ Note that stems ending in *-i and *-u have the first person indicative forms *-ie and *-ue by a regular process of neutralisation.

² A similarly regular process elides a stem-final *-e before the indicative suffixes. Verbs additionally carry a mandatory prefix which marks polarity, emphasis, and relative tense. The prefix system is retained in the northern Namb languages (Nambāno and the Insular Arklobu dialects), but lost without trace in Arklobu proper.

Irregular verbs
Proto-Namb verbs are generally very regular, with only a handful of verbs showing any irregularity at all, shown in the table below. The verb prefixes, however, are still completely regular when attaching to these irregular verbs. Note that the forms with initial *t are regularly voiced to *d when any prefix is added. The first person singular is always prefixed, so only exist with the voiced *d form.

Only a single verb, the equative copula *unor, has irregularity across prefixed forms, as well as a plurality distinction in the second and third person, as shown in the table below. ¹ The singular generic present forms *(an)nuf and *(an)nux were remodelled after the plurals in the northern dialect of Proto-Namb, yielding *(aŋ)ŋwef and *(aŋ)ŋwex respectively.

² The affirmative forms are identical to the negatives, plus addition of *r- (present, future) or *f- (past).

Pronouns
Proto-Namb first and second person pronouns are among the only nominals to have lexically separate singular and plural forms and no numberless form. The third person pronoun may not be considered a true pronoun since it does not follow a similar usage pattern to the first and second person pronouns, but rather falls into a system of relative, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns. These pronouns do, however, have merged accusative-oblique and ergative-genitive-ablative cases, like the true pronouns.