Nambāno

Nambāno or Nambanno is a Namb dialect cluster spoken throughout the Qnōp' lowlands in the first and second millennia AGS.

h and hu
In addition to this core inventory of consonants, h and hu /hʷ/ typically appear in the popular literary language Standard Nambāno and may have been prescribed in speech in some dialects or sociolects. These were present in Old Nambāno but generally were lost around 900 AGS, around the time of its diversification into the Nambāno Proper dialect continuum and the first introduction of writing to Qnōp'.

Nasal vowels
Some fringe dialects of Nambāno feature nasalised long vowels, derived from coda nasal consonants in Old Nambāno. These consonants are sometimes written in Standard Nambāno, particularly in older texts, though no variety of Nambāno Proper retains the nasalisation. Nambāno itself is sometimes spelt ⟨NAMBANNO⟩ (c.f. Old Nambāno *namb-annu).

Numerosity
Nouns in Nambāno carry a lexical property called numerosity which constrains which grammatical numbers they can take. There are four types of numerosity:


 * Countable — Can take all three grammatical numbers, singular, plural and numberless.
 * Uncountable — Only has a numberless form.
 * Individual — Always singular.
 * Numerous — Either singular or plural.

The singular and plural forms of a noun are identical, distinguished solely through pluractionality on verbs. Because of this, grammatical number is really only present on nouns which are "core" arguments of a verb, and so is restricted to just a few nominal cases.

Verbs additionally distinguish the "numberless" grammatical number, but the nouns themselves also take different inflectional morphology. A numberless noun refers to an entity which cannot be enumerated, either because it has no discrete form (a mass noun), because the reference is generic rather than to a specific instance of the object, or because there is only one such object in existence. Though used in a slightly different way, the function of grammatical number in Nambāno may have developed through contact with Möxali, which features a similar concept known as instancing.

The animacy of a noun, either animate or inanimate, is related to its numerosity and can influence its syntactic behaviour. Countable and numerous nouns can be animate or inanimate, while uncountable nouns are always inanimate and individual always animate.

Cases
Nambāno uses five core cases:


 * Absolutive — The least marked case, the direct object of a verb.
 * Dative — Motion towards, target, recipient or beneficiary.
 * Comitative — Coordination, equal accompaniment, i.e. not instrumental.
 * Oblique — The patient of a verb, instrument or attribute.
 * Relative — Generic relationship, often bidirectional. With prepositions, the relative case can take a much broader range of meanings including motion away from, general location, source, cause or agent.

As well as two additional cases present on certain animate nouns:


 * Nominative — The agent or sole subject of a verb, can also be used as a vocative.
 * Possessive — Ownership, a one-way relationship.

A table of all case suffixes is shown below. The relative case can be used to represent the agent or causator of a transitive verb, a feature unique to Nambāno and one of many ergative features of the language.sō nem-i t-ō-mānā

1SG.NOM father-REL PST-IND-learn.PFV.1

"I learnt from my father." Nouns in the "individual" numerosity category follow a nominative-accusative pattern with some transitive verbs, in which the nominative case marks the agent and the absolutive takes the accusative role. A nominative noun is usually placed in initial position.nam-ā am t-ō-molī

father-NOM 1SG.ACC PST-IND-teach.PFV.2/3

"My father taught me."

The nominative case also has a vocative function. An animate noun can be elevated to an "individual" by use of the nominative and possessive cases, which can be used as an expression of reverence or respect for an animal.ijj-ā sadā r-ān-huimē

pig-NOM/VOC INTERR.DAT PRS-EMPH-travel.IPFV.2/3

"What's up, pig?"Inanimate referents use the absolutive case as the patient or direct object of a verb, with the oblique typically having an instrumental meaning.sō tatāhu-o r-ō-talipī soh-a

1SG.NOM hook-OBL PRS-IND-catch.PFV.2/3 fish-ABS

"I caught a fish with a hook."On animate nouns, the oblique often acts like a comitative (with, in the company of), leaving the actual comitative case for coordination only (and, as well as).podd-am pnarr-o huam-∅ p-ān-mōtī

cow-COM child-OBL traveller-ABS PST-EMPH-arrive.PFV.2/3

"The traveller then arrived with a child and a cow."

The possessive case specifically expresses ownership, distinguishing it from the broad range of relationships of the relative.kis-i nēnī ōmēs-nō tī-∅

stone.REL build.PFV.2/3 lord-POS house-ABS

"The lord's house is made of stone."

Countable nouns
The most common inflection is the countable paradigm. Nouns which take the countable inflection have a discrete, countable form, which includes all animate and many inanimate nouns, and have both numbered and numberless forms.

Uncountable nouns
Uncountable nouns are most typically mass nouns, things with no discrete form. They are morphologically categorised by the absolutive case, which typically ends in -ō, but can also end in -ā or -ē.

Individual nouns
Individual nouns are also exclusively singular things, similar to unique nouns, but represent a distinctly separate category of things. Typical examples of individual nouns are personal names, roles and titles e.g. "father" or "lord", deities, rivers and some other named objects. Unique nouns are always inanimate, while individual nouns are always animate. There is an additional conceptual difference, that individual nouns are unique only within a given context, e.g. there are many people who may be addressed with ōmōdā "lord", but only one hatō "sun".

Individual nouns take the special nominative and possessive cases, but the comitative and oblique cases are simply not present. An individual noun has a "super-animate" animacy level and can only occur as a core argument, agent or possessor.

Numerous nouns
Numerous nouns take numbered inflection, but any given numerous noun may only singular or plural. They most typically refer explicitly to quantity, usually used in an adjective-like function, where the noun matches the case of a head noun it modifies. Numerous nouns only exhibit the absolutive, dative and relative cases, since the other cases are entirely unnumbered. Numerals are the most common example of numerous nouns.

Verbs
Nambāno verbs can be grouped into two categories based on their conjugation patterns:


 * Regular verbs take one of ~20 canonical conjugations, each of which follows an internally regular pattern which
 * Irregular verbs are morphologically simpler and can resemble regular verbs, but do not follow a canonical pattern

Regular verbs
The regular verb classes are believed to be derived from common, often themselves irregular, Proto-Gäj verb roots. Each class consists of a set of verbs which each follow a canonical conjugation pattern and often share similar meanings and usages.

The usual semantic associations of the regular verb classes are listed below:


 * -(h)ā — A temporary state of being.
 * -ō — Causation of an event.
 * -(h)ora — Production or creation.
 * -(u)la — Establishment of a state or situation, especially through the physical manipulation of things.
 * -sma — Initiation or resumption.
 * -ata — Desire, intention or necessity.