Pabappa SOV compounds

Subject-object-verb compounds

Some nouns are actually complete sentences with just the verb endings removed. This could be classified as a type of polysynthesis. Unlike the subject-verb compounds above, SOV compounds generally show transitive action, and are commonly used as verbs. However, because all verbs have a stem which behaves grammatically as a noun, they are nonetheless grouped with the other compounds as nouns.

Polysynthetic compounds are generally used metaphorically, since the subject is generally present in the sentence. Many of these words are very old, and make use of short, sometimes even subsyllabic, morphemes that no longer have any independent use in Poswa as standalone words. For example, the early Pabappa verb pi "to kill" has disappeared from the language as a standalone verb because it coalesced with a verb meaning "to lick". However, it is still found in SOV compounds of this type.

Examples of tripartite SOV compounds

Active element	meaning	Passive element	meaning	Verbal element	meaning	New word	meaning
pop	sharp object	wul	fish	pi	to kill	poppi	to go fishing
wul	fish	si	ice	ti	to break open	isti	to behave as a fish breaking through ice
po	hand	lara	legs	pana	to create pleasure	blana	to masturbate
—	—	lara	legs	pana	to create pleasure	lana	to have sex
pul	baby	—	—	isi	to guess	pulisi	children guessing naively; to guess
ta	toddler	—		musa	to play with each other	tansa	children playing with each other; as on a playground
po	hand	tim	soap	i	bubbles; lather	pommi	to lather someone up with soap; to bathe
pip	man	so	man	pana	to create pleasure	pitsuna	gay man
su	sun	sap	snow	im	to make disappear	sussem	to melt
uma	woman	oma	woman	pana	to create pleasure	utana	lesbian
pup	penis	—	—	wupu	bloodshed; pain	puppupu	to rape
pup	penis	ma	womb	su	penetrate	punsa	to impregnate someone; become a father
ma	womb	pul	baby	pi	kill	mappi	to have a miscarriage; spontaneous abortion
pampor	weapon	as	human	api	to repeat	pamporapi	war; when weapons hurt humans
uma	woman	so	man	pana	to create pleasure	unsuna	heterosexual female
pip	man	oma	woman	pana	to create pleasure	piptana	heterosexual male
tipa	flea	lara	legs	pua	to jump, leap	tiblaba	flea
pus	ring	sop	both hands	poba	to trap; restrain	pusoppoba	handcuffs
po	palm of the hand	pap	cheek	pe	to strike, hit	popepe	to slap someone in the face
po	palm of the hand	p(t)ap	buttocks (dual)	pe	to strike, hit	poptape	to spank; to humiliate
pep	hand	piri	skin, body	pe	to strike, hit	pepripe	to punch someone
pup	penis	pip	vagina	pana	to create pleasure	pupipuna	to have (penile-vaginal) sexual intercourse
po	hand	pup	penis	pana	to create pleasure	popupana	a man masturbating
po	hand	pip	vagina	pana	to create pleasure	popuna	a woman masturbating

Choice of morphemes in SOV compounds

While some of the words in the table above may seem uncharacteristically graphic for a language such as Pabappa, their use is perpetuated by the fact that many of them have died out as standalone morphemes in the modern language. For example, although the compound puppupu "to rape" is made up of pup "penis" and wupu "bloodshed, pain", the shortest modern word for penis is pumapi and the word for pain is just one of many such words.

Likewise, if punsa "to impregnate" were re-created using modern morphemes, it would look something like

Pumapi rompa pussap.

Penis penetrates womb.

(Spaces have been inserted to make the word boundaries clearer.)

Likewise, mappi "abortion, miscarriage" would have to be expressed as

Rompa pampap pipi.

Womb kills baby.

Even poppi "to go fishing" would appear as something such as

Papiba ibip pipi.

Sharp object kills fish.

Lastly, some SOV morphemes have become generalized as metaphors such that their S component has effectively lost its meaning. Although pulisi means "to guess", it previously carried the more specific sense "to guess in a childlike way", where pul was a word for baby that came to mean a word for children in general before dying out. If a new compound in this style were created today it could be either

Pampa pulisi.

Baby's guess.

Or

Tambor pulisi.

Child's guess.

Deliberate polysemy

Elements in SOV compounds could be said to be immune from being pushed out of the language due to sound changes and their resulting collisions. That is, many SOV elements are homophonous with many others, and this is not seen as a problem by the speakers because, when combined with the other elements of the compound, the meaning is usually clear. Nevertheless, sometimes elements remain ambiguous even when they are compounded, and the Pabaps use this to create new words with deliberately broad ranges of meaning.

Pup

For example, in the table above, pup shows up as a morpheme meaning "penis", but it can have many other meanings:

• pup "penis", from Babakiam nubap
• pup "buttocks; to bend", from Babakiam tuap
• pup "backside, antipode, polar opposite", from Babakiam pupi
• pup "belly, fat, blubber", from Babakiam ŋuŋe
• pup "to bounce", from Babakiam fūp
• pup "to lie down", from Babakiam kuap
• pup "textbook, learning materials", from Babakiam kupi
• pup "coast, land's end", from Babakiam ŋep
• pup "trail, path", from Babakiam pube
• pup "cup, glass, bottle; drinking container", from Babakiam pupi and puši
• pup "green plants (of any kind)", from Babakiam pubi
• pup "to stand in one place", from Babakiam šubup

The first four of these words have given rise to a new merged word meaning "genitals, midsection, private parts", and therefore expanded the range of meanings of words that use it. These words are not etymologically related to each other, but their meanings are close enough that modern speakers often think of them as a single morpheme with a new meaning merging all of the meanings of the older words. Thus, words such as puppo "diaper" can be analyzed with any of the four possible "old word" etymologies or simply declared to be derived from the new merged word.

One could imagine a Pabappa-speaking poet writing a sentence such as

Pom pupum pupum pupil pusi, panimpi pupum pupim pusi pi pupip pibi pusi.

I bounced along the coastal trail on my backside, then I lay down on my belly in the plants and propped my textbook up."

But aside from the fact that the mandatory verb and noun inflections make the sentence much less homophonous than one might expect from looking at the word roots, the sentence would be very difficult to understand even with all these added inflections. It could just as well be translated:

Pom pupum pupum pupil pusi, panimpi pupum pupim pusi pi pupip pibi pusi.

I laid on the trail's coast on my textbook, then I stood on the plants in my belly and bounced my backside up."

Pip

Another example of a highly polysemic root is pip. Aside from being the copula "to be" and serving as a conjunction meaning "if", pip can also mean:

• pip "adult male", from Babakiam pibu
• pip "unit of measure", from Babakiam bibu
• pip "baby, cute baby" (a term of endearment), from Babakiam bibu
• pip "evergreen tree", from Babakiam kiamabu
• pip "here, in this place", from Babakiam pipu
• pip "dot, spot, small stain; animal droppings", from Babakiam pitu
• pip "beak, bill, peninsula", from Babakiam pipu
• pip "straight, direct; not bent or curved", from Babakiam pižažep

None of these meanings, not even "here, in this place", are used in modern Pabappa outside of compounds whose other elements would make clear the intended meaning of pip in that word. However, use in place names is common. For example, one says wipombi for "pine tree" but there is a land feature named (with the expected sound changes) Pibrola "Pine Ridge".

Monosyllabic words whose vowel is -i- or -u- are especially likely to be polysemic because of sound changes that occurred several thousand years ago turning all diphthongs beginning with a /j/ or /w/ sound into the monophthongs /i/ and /u/ respectively.

Pap

Nevertheless, words with central /a/ are also common, since /a/ is the commonest vowel in the language and has been so for a long time:

• pap "violence, war; to bump an object with one's body", from Babakiam baka and pabu
• pap "wolf, dog, predator", from Babakiam pap
• pap "pincers, claws of a crab", from Babakiam pap
• pap "worker, one who gathers power", from Babakiam baku
• pap "to bounce", from Babakiam bažap
• pap "dandelion", from Babakiam papi
• pap "bird", from Babakiam papi
• pap "ten (cardinal)", from Babakiam bap
• pap "sand, small rocks", from Babakiam fap

Note that since Babakiam was spoken 4500 years ago, some words have been homophonous for thousands of years. In the early language, these were distinguished by context. For example, papi "bird" was animate and papi "dandelion" was inanimate. Thus the word for dandelion could never be the subject of a sentence, and confusion was possible only when they appeared as the object. The same was true of pap "wolf" and pap "claw". However, as above, none of these words occurs in any context in modern Pabappa except as part of a compound.

There are fewer examples of polysemy with CV words, partly because such words are more likely to have been polysemous even back in the days of Babakiam, and partly because, due to a smaller possible number of word shapes, Babakiam had fewer such words to begin with. For example, there are only six possible meanings for the morpheme pu, compared to 12 for pup. The same ratio appears for -i-: pi has four meanings, but pip has eight.