Old Ribäng is the language of the Ribangese before it developed even further and several dialects eventually emerged. The language was spoken throughout the mangrove area before the nomadic invasion. Old Ribäng developed from the Ribä-Nomadic proto-language. The language uses VSO and is generally agglutinative. It has 3 grammatical genders, which are reflected in the culture.
There is no case in the language, but a more complex system of time, aspect and mode. Plural can only be understood through context or auxiliary words, only definiteness is expressed. The language also has vowel harmony and uses a base-6 number system.
Phonology
Consonants
The consonant phonemes of Old Ribangese are as follows:
| Consonants | Labial | Alveolar | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | voiced | b | d | g | ɢ | |
| unvoiced | p | t | k | q | (ʔ) | |
| Fricative | voiced | v | z | (ɦ) | ||
| unvoiced | f | s | χ | h | ||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Liquid | l | |||||
| Rhotic | ɾ | ʁ | ||||
The glottal stop /ʔ/ is often used to realize the stops between affixes.
The voiced glottal fricative /ɦ/ is an allophone. /h/ is realized this way before a long vowel.
The voiced velar nasal /ŋ/ only occurs at the end of words.
Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Old Ribangese are as follows:
| Vowels | Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | rounded | u u: | |
| unrounded | i i: | ɯ ɯ: | |
| Open | a a: | ɑ ɑ: | |
Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is an important feature of Old Ribangese, as it happens every time affixes are added. Prefixes are the most common affix in the language. This creates the general rule of "from right to left", i.e. the root dictates how the vowels change in the prefix. /u/ in both lenghts is a transparent vowel that is completely ignored in the vowel harmony. The first vowel in a root is the one that triggers the vowel harmony.
If there is a back vowel (/ü/ or /a/) in the root, the preceeding vowels change to back vowels as well. /ä/ becomes /a/ and /i/ becomes /ü/. If there is a front vowel (/i/ or /ä/) in the root, the preceeding vowels change to front vowels too. /a/ becomes /ä/ and /ü/ becomes /i/.
Orthography
| Consonants | |
|---|---|
| ɾ | r |
| ʁ | ǵ |
| ŋ | ng |
| χ | x |
| ɦ | h |
| ɢ | q̃ |
| Vowels | |
| i: | í |
| u: | ú |
| a | ä |
| a: | a̋ |
| ɑ | a |
| ɑ: | á |
| ɯ | ü |
| ɯ: | ű |
Syntax
Old Ribangese uses VSO for their syntax, SVO being the only alternative for questions or emphasis. Adjectives come before the nouns, the possessor, auxiliaries, demonstratives and numerals do so as well. Prepostions are common in the language. For wh-questions, there is no fronting. The question word is insterted at the place where the word is missing, i.e. "Your name is what?". Adverbs are used like adjectives and go before the verb. Unlike adjectives though, they don't take on gender prefixes.
Slots
The following table is a summary of all the possible affixes for nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns and in what order they are placed.
| Slots | nouns | verbs | adjectives | pronouns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | possessiveness | inflection | gender | reflexive |
| 2 | definiteness | tense | superlative | topic marker |
| 3 | topic marker | aspect | comparative | |
| 4 | mood | |||
| 5a | passive | |||
| 5b | causative | |||
| 6 | imperative |
Grammar
Nouns
Every noun in Old Ribangese carries an inherent gender, indicated by the first vowel of the word. Theres masculine, feminine and neuter. Words starting with a or ä are neuter, with u are masculine and with i or ü are feminine. Length does not play a role here.
Nouns can take on the possible possessive prefixes:
- 1S i-, u- or a-
- 2S as-
- 3S ir-, ug- or ar-
- 1P í-
- 2P a̋-
- 3P ag-
While there is no way of forming plurals, definiteness is indicated by adding prefixes as well. Nouns are indefinite by standard. Once ri-, ru- or rä- is added, depending on the gender of the noun, it counts as definite.
Adjectives