The meaning is largely carried out by subject, object, and possessive affixes attached to verbs, prepositions, and nouns.
Other words, such as yá̰a̰ "thing", dèē "person", tàa "speech", and lòo "place" are used somewhat pronominally as something, somebody, something said, and somewhere.
In some cases the stems also changes, for example, owner= nge՝, owners to nge՝-a՛-gӫ Through the addition of prefixes, suffixes, tone changes and auxiliary verbs you are able to inflect tense, mood and aspect.
Verbs do not inflect for singular or plural directly, but subject pronouns or auxiliary particles may signal number.
They explain size, shape, and colour, for example, big, red, small Numerals: Functions to indicate quantity or rank, for example, one= kə́rā, two= jōó Possessives adjectives: To indicate ownership, for example, my eye= kùm-ḿ, your hand= Jī-í Adjective-noun Agreement: An agreement through infixes that corresponds to the noun class of the head noun.
For instance, eleven might be expressed as "ten and one", though specific constructions would depend on Mbay's grammatical rules.
Ngōn sà mápà túu-be, meaning "The child ate all the bread eat".
Further, unlike in English, pronominal affixes that refer back to the head noun are omitted: There are substantial cases where the standard word order is altered by using constructions resulting in an embedded phrase or clauses in a position at the beginning of a sentence.
The English translation for some of these sentences is at times difficult, for example, Ì dí wáy ūtē-n̄-èé nà̰ā̰ kújē-ú kɵ̀ ngán-ī-gē ndì-ī-mɔ̄kɵ̄-n̄ tītɵ̄-bè wà , meaning What is it that you are eating like that hidden away there in the house with your children.
Note that it is not possible to move an indefinite noun phrase to the front in this fashion, that is /kɵ̀dē dá sumbā kàdē òō-n̄-á màjè/, ''it is important that they see an elephant'' is not grammatical.
Greater levels of nesting, on the other hand, do not prevent frontal placements of a noun phrase with a conferential resumptive pronominal affix from occurring.
Word order in Mbay language has an SVO pattern also, that is the subject+verb+object, their relation helps to give meaning to sentences a reader hears or reads.
It is supposed to be noted that the choice of the form of these demonstratives depends on the Mbay view of the position of the object.
If the object is viewed as having been laid in its position (as a pencil on the table), the demonstrative /ń-tèn/ is used, this includes things such as books or papers lying on the table, grains, nuts, fruits, cloths as well as anything lying on its side, such as a soda bottle or a rolled-up mat.
This includes trees, poles in the ground, walls , grass fencing, in short anything in an upright position.