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'.

Vowels
The vowel sequences *ea *aa *oa were abundant in Old Nambāno and may have acted as singular diphthongs, with *ea actually occurring more frequently than isolated *e. They primarily arose from from two sound changes occurring around a similar time:


 * Vocalisation of coda r > a
 * Lowering of close vowels i ɨ u > e a o / _a

Certain other vowel sequences such as *io and *uo were also common.

Phonotactics
Old Nambāno had a maximal BRVC syllabic structure, where B is an obstruent or nasal, R is a sonorant, and C is any consonant, though obstruents never occurred at the end of words.

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 dorsal consonants *g *k *h *ŋ could occur preceding any vowel except *u, where they are neutralised into a labialised dorsal + *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
Medial sonorants in the coda were limited to *m *n *ŋ *r, all of which except *m were later lost in Nambāno, generating long vowels.

The labialised dorsal consonants *gʷ *kʷ *hʷ *ŋʷ were not allowed in coda position,

Consonant clusters
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 dorsal 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 dorsal, 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 dorsal 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- *-ŋm- *-ŋs- > *-ŋk- *-mm- *-ns-. 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 and *s, e.g. *-dp- *-tg- *-gs- > *-pp- *-gg- *-ss-.

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

Nouns
Each noun was either countable or uncountable. Countable nouns in the absolutive and dative cases distinguished singular, plural and uncounted forms while uncountable nouns were always uncounted. This separation ultimately derives from Proto-Koyanic's two animacy categories, though the countability of a noun was fairly unrelated to its animacy by the time of Old Nambāno.

The case suffixes present in Old Nambāno are shown below: