Old Arklobu

Old Arklobu is the partially reconstructed ancestor to the Arklobu language later spoken in Krobu.

Vowels
In addition to the ten monophthongs, two diphthongs *ei and *oi are reconstructed. *oi may have had a front rounded quality [øj].

Case
The relative case triggers certain stem-final consonants to mutate according to the following rules:
 * -l -y -w > -r
 * -b -d -ɟ -g -ɣ > -p -t -c -c -j

Ablaut
The final vowel in the stem of a noun follows one of four ablaut patterns, shown in the table below. An archaic form of the class 3 and 4 relative plurals saw the use of a diphthong on vowel-final stems, for example the older *kroboiri "Krobu.REL" which was later regularised to *krobyri.

The four ablaut classes primarily derive from different sets of vowels in Proto-Namb, though various sound changes and analogical processes have obscured the regular correspondences in many places. In general, ablaut classes correspond to the following Proto-Namb vowels:


 * *a
 * *e
 * *i, *ie
 * *o, *u, *ue

Some examples exhibiting the four ablaut classes are shown in the table below.