Bmarang

Bmarang is a group of mostly mutually-intelligible dialects spoken by bands of Bmarang people. The Bmarang people are feared as fierce warriors and noted for their height and for their art, in which their language features prominently.

Phonology
Phonology is remarkably stable across Bmarang dialects. Variation primarily comes from the pharyngeals, which are uvulars in some dialects. Katharre Bmarang lost the pharyngeals and developed sets of pharyngealized and nasalized vowels.

Consonants
/k/ followed by /ʡ/ in the next syllable assimilates to /ʡ/. /k/ and /ʡ/ must match between onset and coda: there are no kV(C)ʡ or ʡV(C)k syllables.

/ɴʕ/ is primarily realized as nasalization on the preceding vowel and may be partially or totally elided.

The laminal sets contrast only before mid vowels. Before /i e/ they are always laminopalatal and before /u o/ they are always laminodental.

The retroflex series causes retroflexion on the preceding vowel. Apicoalveolars preceding a retroflex assimilate to retroflex.

Nasals and laterals are often preploded, particularly word-initially where the allophones [ᵇm ᶢŋ ᵈd̪ ᵈl̪ ᵈɲ] are near-universal (/ɴʕ/ does not occur word-initially). They are romanized as 〈bm gng dnh dl dny〉 word-initially.

Vowels
All vowels may occur long or short.

Orthographically, breathy vowels are represented with a diaeresis: 〈ï ü ë ə̈ ö ä〉. Long vowels are doubled.

Vowel harmony
Vowels are divided into two sets, /i u ə/ and /e o a/. A word will have vowels from either one or the other, but not both. Words containing pharyngeals require the lower set. Furthermore, mid/high vowels in adjacent syllables usually must match. The sequences i..i, u..u, e..e, and o..o are common, but i..u, u..i, e..o, and o..e are very rare. Most prefixes and suffixes change form to match the vowels of the stem.

Tone
Bmarang dialects have 3 or 4 tones: high, mid, low, and falling. High tone never occurs on breathy vowels. The falling tone is not present in all dialects and has a limited distribution in those that do have it. The tone bearing unit is the mora, and long vowels may have rising and falling tones resulting from underlying H/M/L sequences.

L is realized as extra low on breathy vowels.

There is significant downstep, with the upper end of the pitch range shifting downward after every M or L. This means that consecutive M tones will not be the same level, and in fact the defining feature of H is simply that it is the same level as the preceding H or M tone. The pitch range resets on the next intonation phrase.

Word structure
Syllables are always CV(C)(C). Coda clusters occur only word-internally. Stems are of the form CV(C)(C)CVC and must begin with a peripheral or laminal consonant, peripherals being most common.

Consonant clusters
If a peripheral consonant occurs in a cluster, it must be the first consonant. Sequences of two peripheral consonants are permitted across syllable boundaries. Retroflex consonants do not occur in clusters. Nasals and /l̪ y r/ must be homoorganic with the following consonant.

There is a strong preference in a sequence of syllables A.B for the coda of A to be more sonorous (approximant > nasal > stop) than the onset of B.

Writing and art
In spite of a strictly hunter-gatherer lifestyle, the Bmarang have a well-developed writing system—many, in fact. Each band will create its own writing system, differentiating them from their neighbors and acting as an artistic signature for that band. These are often highly elaborate, with many forms of each letter, syllable, or word. Many eschew fixed forms entirely, with each "form" consisting instead of rules that can be applied to a multitude of shapes. Color frequently serves to differentiate forms as well.

Once established, all art from a band makes use of its writing system. Stories and quotes are often embedded in larger art pieces, sometimes scattered as a series of loosely-defined forms all throughout a picture.

Whistled and signed registers
The Bmarang have particularly well-developed whistled and signed registers. Signed registers may vary significantly with dialect, to the point of mutual unintelligibility. The whistled register, however, is generally well-understood, based around the tones of spoken Bmarang. It may be used to communicate over very long distances.

The Bmarang people occasionally hunt by running down animals over long distances. Such runs are sacred and normal speech cannot be used while a persistence hunt is in progress.

Complex predicates
Bmarang has a small class of 6 ‘light verbs’ that can inflect for tense, person, conjunct/disjunct, etc. Other ‘preverbs’ or ‘heavy verbs’ must occur with one of these light verbs in finite clauses, with the exception of imperatives which allow a bare preverb. Many preverbs can transparently be used as nouns, for example tyatam ‘to run; a run’. The choice of light verb is lexically conditioned by the preverb.

There are 6 light verbs:

Preverbs may be reduplicated, which indicates iterativity or distributivity.

Alignment
Bmarang exhibits a split-ergative alignment: it is nominative-accusative in first person and second person singular, tripartite in second person plural, and ergative-absolutive in third person.

Noun classes
Bmarang has an elaborate system of shape/posture-based noun classes. Noun class is marked by a suffix. Each noun class may correspond to multiple suffixes, the choice of which is partially phonologically and partially lexically conditioned by the stem:

All of these undergo the usual vowel harmony rules: for example -urrə may be realized as any of -urrə, -irrə, -orra, or -erra.

On pronouns and nouns referring to humans and some animals, noun class indicates posture. Other nouns are assigned largely fixed noun classes based on shape, but some may occur with several noun classes which have a somewhat derivational meaning: palmanh ‘sizeable greenery’ → palmanhaya (sitting) ‘bush’ and palmanhorra (standing) ‘tree’. Insects and species of bats are assigned more or less arbitrarily. Many abstract nouns and nouns to do with celestial bodies are classified as kneeling.

Noun class is marked on the noun, adjectives (including numbers), demonstratives, and verbal pronominal clitics.

Ablaut
Plurals are often marked with ablaut. Several patterns exist:

Lexicon
Lexicon varies widely between Bmarang dialects. There is a taboo in place where once a person dies, their name and any words that sound similar are removed from the lexicon for a period of time. Often a word is borrowed from a neighboring band to replace it, or a new word is simply innovated.