Proto-Nebulonic language

The Proto-Nebulonic language is the hypothetical, unattested ancestor language of the Nebulonic language. The reconstruction is very incomplete.

Stress
Proto-Nebulonic stress was trochaic; the first syllable of a word received primary stress, the next would receive no stress, and the third would receive secondary stress. From there, there would be alternation between no stress and secondary stress. As the language changed, unstressed vowels were syncopated under certain circumstances; this is characteristic of the Primitive and Early Old Nebulonic period.

Phonotactics
Roots were primarily of a CVC or CVCV pattern. The nucleus of a CVC root could be a monophthong or a diphthong, as could the first V of a CVCV root. Also, the second C of a CVCV root could be geminate. Other than geminates and /sC/ (which could only appear syllable-initially), consonant clusters are rare; the consonant clusters of Old and Modern Nebulonic are often the result of Primitive and Early Old Nebulonic syncope.

Particles, on the other hand, are primarily used for derivation or for independent words such as demonstratives. Phonotactically, they may have V, CV, VC, or CVC structure.

Morphology
Proto-Nebulonic was an agglutinative language.

Nouns
Nouns declined for relatively few cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, partitive, prepositional); other relations were expressed through postpositions attached directly onto the end of the noun, much like Sajem Tan's "pseudo-cases". In Old and Modern Nebulonic, these are true postpositions.

Verbs
Proto-Nebulonic had a rich system of auxiliary verbs. These mostly became proper verbs that take dependent clauses in Old and Modern Nebulonic; however, the aspect particles of Primitive Nebulonic (for example, *te, which marks the perfective aspect) derive from auxiliary verbs, and these survive in Old and Modern Nebulonic as the onsets of the tense-aspect particles (for example, the ‹tj› in Old Nebulonic tjon).

Lexicon
Following is a list of Proto-Nebulonic words:
 * u̯uki "light rain, drizzle" > PmN ˈuːkɯ (long vowel encourages vowel harmony) > ON úkju (loss of vowel length, and breaking of /ɯ/ to /ju/) > MN úcu "fog"
 * deu̯-on "nation (family-COLL)" > PmN ˈdjoːn > ON djon > MN zon "nation"