Morphology

The morphology of Eberban is composed of 16 consonants (n, r, l, m, p, b, f, v, t, d, s, z, c, j, g, k), five vowels (i, e, a, o, u) and finally the letters h and ’, for a total of 23 letters. Among the consonants, n, r and l are designated as (alveolar) sonorants, and play an important role in Eberban’s morphology.The alphabetical order is hnrlmpbfvtdszcjkgieaou'. The same letter appearing multiple times in a row is considered identical to the letter not being repeated, but can informally be used in written media to convey length of sounds in speech.

Strings of multiple vowels and h appear a lot in Eberban’s morphology, and thus are coined vhowels in this book. Note that in vhowels, h can only appear between two vowels.

Words are usually written separated by spaces, however this is not mandatory. While removing spaces, however, it might be required to add the word boundary marker symbol ’ in some places. More than one marker in a row is not allowed. Letters are chained one after the other without spaces to form words which are divided into multiple categories based on their structure.

Eberban text is usually written all lowercase (outside of foreign text quotes), but uppercase can informally be used in written media to convey volume (such as yelling). Outside of ’ no punctuation symbol is used, and any other character is considered a space, but informally punctuation from other languages can be used (for example by writing " around quotes, or ending sentences with .) as long as the proper Eberban grammar is also used.

Word types

Particles

Particles are words exerting grammatical functions. They can either:

  • start with a single non-sonorant consonant, followed only by vhowels, like zi, mio or tiho.
  • start with a sonorant or vowels, and be a string of vhowels and sonorants. They can end either with a vowel or sonorant. Exemples: a, ol, ahu or nu.

Particles are themselves categorized into families having identical grammar but different meanings. Those families are usually designated using a particle in capital letters (like MI or VEI), which is by convention the first particle in this family in alphabetical order.

All other words are predicate words and express intrinsic meanings, such as “cat”, “language” or “teach”. They are grouped into the following categories :

Roots

Roots are the building blocks of the language and express meanings that would be hard or too long to convey otherwise. They can either:

  • start with a single non-sonorant consonant followed by a mix of vhowels and at least one sonorant or medial consonant pair, like ban, mana, cuina or marne.
  • start with a valid initial consonant pair followed by a mix of vhowels and any number of sonorants or medial consonant pairs (even none), like bju, cpena or djin.

A sonorant can appear only between two vowels or at the end of the root, while a medial pair can appear only between two vowels, but not at the end.

The following chart shows initial pairs in light blue, medial pairs in pink, and invalid pairs in dark gray (with a short explanation for why they are invalid):

Chart of valid initial and medial pairs

Borrowings

Borrowings allow importing foreign words or names. They are prefixed by the vowel u, and have more relaxed rules about consonants than native Eberban words. Mainly, they can contain consonant triplets which must obey the following rules:

  • Consonant pairs must either be initial pairs, medial pairs or sonorant
    • consonant.
  • Consonant triplets C1C2C3 are valid if C1C2 is a medial pair and C2C3 is an initial pair.
  • Alternatively, consonant triplets can be a sonorant followed by an initial pair.

After the u prefix the borrowing can start by a vowel, a single consonant, a initial or medial consonant pair, a consonant triplet or h. If this first letter is a u it must be prefixed with a ’ to separate it from the the prefix.

Borrowings must end with a vowel, or a vowel followed by a single consonant (not only sonorants). In written media, borrowings must be followed by either spaces or a word boundary marker, which is realized in speech by pausing after the borrowing to properly separate it from the following word.

Similarly, the initial u must be either preceded by spaces or a word boundary marker, and realized orally as either a pause or a glottal stop.

Freeform variables

Freeform variables allow defining predicates with a custom name. They follow the same morphology as borrowings but use the i prefix instead of u.

Compounds

Compounds allow making new words from multiple other kind of words. They start with either e, en or er and follow the same rule as the u of borrowings. Their structure will be detailed later in this book.

Example

With spaces : a za umia tsen eberban
Without spaces : aza’umia’tsen’eberban

Particles : a, za
Borrowing : umia
Freeform variable: ibar
Root : tsen
Compounds : eberban

Reasoning

Outside of borrowings and assignable names, encountering a non-sonorant consonant or a word boundary marker means it is the start of a new word; unless it the first letter of a medial consonant pair which cannot be misunderstood for the start of a new word. Word boundary markers or spaces prevent words from “merging” into adjacent words.

These simple rules prevent any ambiguity of word boundaries, which is called a Self-Segregating Morphology.