Alöbi grammar

Adverbial cases
Nouns inflect for three morphosyntactic cases which mark the role of a noun in a verb or stative phrase.

Absolutive
The unmarked case. Used for the sole argument of a stative phrase or the direct object of certain transitive verbs.

Ergative
The ergative case is marked with the suffix -in, which takes the form -en in High Alöbi dialects. This case is used for the agent of transitive verbs, which may be the sole argument if the verb phrase has no explicit object.

Oblique
The oblique case is marked with -b on vowel-final stems and -eb otherwise. Nouns in the oblique case are most commonly used in an accusative or dative role, as the direct object or "receiver" of a transitive verb. Some verbs take the absolutive, while others take the oblique case as their direct object. The oblique is also used for additional arguments to any verb, with the particular role specified with prepositions.

Grammatical number
A prefix can be optionally attached directly to a noun stem to specify grammatical number. All nouns still have a grammatical number even if not specified with a prefix, the number may be implied by context or verb inflection, or a default number is assumed depending on the noun. For example, animals and people are plural by default and so unspecified number is generally treated as plural. Things like the sun and the world are always singular, so never need to be marked as such.

A noun with a number prefix is said to have instanced reference to a specific, countable instance of a thing, regardless of definiteness, rather than generic reference to a kind or category. The instancing number prefixes of Alöbi are shown in the table below.

The dual number is used for a pair of complementary things, such as a married couple, a pair of shoes, or the two moons of Winter, while the paucal number represents a generic set of around two to five things.

Numerals
The numeral system of Alöbi is base-five, with the basic numeral roots from one to five; ac-, wib-, nüh-, bix- and om-.

Greater numbers are formed using a special suffix -ö, which turns a numeral into an adjective which modifies a (multiple of five) numeral noun by adding to it.acö om-, wibö om-, nühö om-, bixö om-

one-add five, two-add five, three-add five, four-add five

six, seven, eight, nineTen and 25 have their own roots, üs- and myaq- respectively, other multiples of five are expressed using a mixture of 25s, tens and fives using the relational linker suffix -i.

Classifiers
Numeral stems do not occur in isolation and must be suffixed with a classifier which specifies the type of object being counted. Animals are classified by type of animal and non-animal objects are generally classified by shape. Numerals do not modify nouns but rather are nouns which can be modified by the thing being counted. The noun being counted is adjectivised by a genitive prefix a-, and falls last in the list of adjectives modifying the numeral noun.owa ugo, a-ugo bix-to, owa a-ugo bix-to
 * -tu — Initially referring to Xiyeru people, derived from etu [ˈedʊ] "Xiyeru person" ← Xiri eru "person".
 * -ö — Partially a back-formation from omö "major month (50 days)", rebracketed as five-ᴄʟꜰ.

big ugo, GEN-ugo four-CL(large_animal) big GEN-ugo four-CL(large_animal)

‘big ugo, four ugo, four big ugo’Context often permits the original noun to be dropped:cia öb, cia wib-ka

red person, red two-CL(people)

‘red person, two red people’Grammatical number is a strictly separate system to the numerals, which are in fact grammatically singular nouns by default and can therefore take number marking like any other noun. Typically counted things like days, animals and traded goods are often referred to by specific numeral constructions: While uninstanced nouns with no specified number are treated as plural by the pronominal and verb agreement systems, numeral nouns are treated as singular. For example, ugo is interpreted as an unspecified number of ugo, whereas a-ugo om-to is interpreted as a single group of five ugo.
 * yo-ac-uk (singular) — A single branch of a tree or cimcim.
 * k-om-lig (dual) — A person's fingers, lit. a pair of five rod-shaped things.
 * xun-üs-ay (plural) — One year or the calendar in general, lit. many tens of abstract counted things, alluding to its "weeks" of ten days.
 * (e)-bix-ka (singular) — A team of four people composed of an iniwab "coordinator" and three other specific distinct roles, a common structure used in hunting, construction and other small-scale collaborative efforts.

-n-
A special numeral root, -n-, carries no value and serves as a dummy root for lexical derivation using classifiers. It always occurs as a coda nasal and is the only zero-syllabic root in the language. It assimilates to the following consonant like other underlying coda nasals, so can also manifest as [ŋ] or [m], but is written -n- regardless.

Unlike other numeral roots, -n- is used very commonly to refer to all things, whether they are typically counted or not, and is commonly inflected with an instancing prefix. Some examples of words derived from -n- are shown below:
 * ti-n-sü — A fish, typically as food.
 * ke-n-ka — A pair of Öb who have formed a life bond similar to marriage.
 * bu-n-to — A small group of large animals. In the context of trade, a bunto is a group of ugo consisting of one male and a few females.
 * xi-n-iw — A generic plural group of flying birds, i.e. a flock.

True pronouns
First and second person pronouns are "true" pronouns which represent the speaker and the addressee respectively. The true pronouns follow a nominative-accusative alignment, where the nominative case is used for transitive agents and stative subjects and the accusative is used as the direct object of verbs which would ordinarily take an absolutive noun.yaten yasu banö

1SG.NOM 2SG.ACC see

‘I see you’Like the typical absolutive case, the nominative also has a genitive function when placed immediately before a noun.yaten yo-(a)mam

1SG.NOM SG.INAN-house

‘my house’Additionally, there is a dative case used for the "recipient" role of verbs which would ordinarily take an oblique noun as direct object.yaten yosol xun-naqem oltüm

1SG.NOM 2SG.DAT PL.INAN-food.ABS give

‘I give you some food’Additional arguments to any verb take the oblique case with prepositions, like any other noun.yaten lan yosiw yo-xayay ibyal

1SG.NOM COM 2SG.OBL INAN.SG-river travel_through

‘I cross the river with you’A full table of true pronouns is shown in the table below. Additionally, possessive proclitics are sometimes used to express certain inalienable possessions. These clitics take different forms depending on whether they precede a vowel or a consonant, shown in the table below: n-inin inel ten-noclo oltüm

1.POSS-parent.ERG 1SG.DAT 1.POSS-name give

‘my parent gave me my name’ty-acasin oso-k-tihac xulab

SG.AN-snake.ERG 2.POSS-DU-leg wrap_around

‘A snake is wrapping around your legs’

Classifier pronouns
Alöbi has no true third person pronouns, instead using the dummy numeral -n- described above which takes classifiers and grammatical number prefixes. For example, tables of third person "pronouns" used for Öb and non-Öb people are shown below: