Archive:Q'eb language
| Q'eb language | |
|---|---|
| q'eblat | |
| Ethnicity | Q'eb people |
| Language family |
|
| CWS code | – |
The Q'eb language is a language spoken by the Q'eb people living in the Confederation of Ebo Nganagam and Kema Mi Amo.
Unlike the neighboring Ebo Nganagam language, the Q'eb language has a long writing tradition.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio-dental | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Epiglottal | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||||
| Plosive | p b | t tʼ d | k kʼ g | q qʼ | ||||||||
| Fricative | s z | ʃ ʒ | χ ʁ | |||||||||
| Affricate | t͡s t͡sʼ d͡z | t͡ʃ t͡ʃʼ d͡ʒ | ||||||||||
| Approximant | ʋ | j | ||||||||||
| Trill | r | |||||||||||
| Flap or tap | ||||||||||||
| Lateral fric. | ||||||||||||
| Lateral app. | l | |||||||||||
| Lateral flap |
Vowels
| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |||
| Near-close | |||||
| Close-mid | |||||
| Mid | |||||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |||
| Near-open | æ | ||||
| Open | ɑ |
Phonotactics
The Q'eb language allows an elaborate possibility of consonant clusters, it is not uncommon to have four or five consonants in an initial cluster, for example, ksmrdans /qʼɑriχs si ksmrdɑns/ "he did not make it" consists of an initial cluster of five consonants.
Orthography
Grammar
The Q'eb language is a highly synthetic agglutinating language, it has both polypersonal agreements and nominal cases.
Morphology
Nouns
Nouns in the Q'eb language inflect for cases and numbers, in the Q'eb language, the number suffixes precede the case suffixes.
There are two major ways to form the plural number of nouns in the Q'eb language: Umlaut and suffix. Only a set of monosyllabic words have umlaut plurals, most of which are nouns indicating people, and all other nouns take the suffix -ed for the plural form, and when using the suffix -ed, in multisyllabic words, the /a/ or /e/ in the last syllable of the stem is frequently dropped when the plural suffix -ed is used. For example:
- le "person" - li "people" (umlaut plural)
- galk "tree" - galked "trees"
- zag "fish(singular)" - zaged "fish(plural)"
- eshgal "world" - eshgled "worlds"(note the elision of the /a/ in the last syllable)
Adjectives
Verbs
The Q'eb language has a complex verbal morphology, the verb has polypersonal agreement and other inflections.