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| '''Pabappa''' is the most iconic language of present-day planet [[Teppala]], although not the most widely spoken, either in terms of number of speakers or geographical extent. It is similar to [[Poswa]], but much simpler in almost every way. Since splitting off from Poswa about 3200 years ago, it has changed more quickly than Poswa, again in almost every way. However, the general acoustic impression of Pabappa is closer to that of their shared parent language, [[Babakiam|Bābākiam]], than is Poswa's, because both languages underwent various sound shifts that created new consonants and consonant clusters, but only Pabappa later simplified them back to a system similar to Bābākiam. | | :''This page presents the language as a grammar organized by subject. See [[Pabappa/scratchpad]] for older chronological updates. FOR NOW, ALL PAGES ARE SCRATCHPADS.'' |
| | '''Pabappa''' is the daughter language of [[babakiam|Play]] that remained in the original Play homeland around the capital city. |
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| '''NOTE: Because most of my writing in this encyclopedia concerns the time period from 1700 to 4268 AD, nearly every mention of the word "Pabappa" in fact refers to its ancestor, [[Babakiam|Bābākiam]].''' The use of the name Pabappa is to make it clear that it refers to the language spoken in [[Paba]], while the use of the name [[Paba]] is to show its historical and geographical continuity with the present-day Paba. | | Pabappa is a '''Lava Bed''' language, like its sister Poswa, and its parent language Play. The grammar is noticeably simpler than in these other languages, but still retains the classic Lava Bed trait of using suffixes and infixes that can affect all parts of a word, even the beginning, hence "erupting" and molding all of the available space. |
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| | Unlike [[Poswa]], Pabappa continues to make use of [[compounds]]. |
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| ==Phonology== | | ==Phonology== |
| The phonology consists of five vowels: /a e i o u/, and ten consonants: /p m s b l w r t d n/. If /w/ is analyzed as an allophone of /u/, there are only nine consonants, which rivals but does not quite beat the smallness of the phonology of Late Andanese. For comparison, Bābākiam had four vowels (/a i u ə/) and 11 consonants (/p b m f t n s š ž k ŋ/; note that /w j/ were considered allophones of the vowels), while Poswa has six vowels and 29 consonants. All words are accented on the initial syllable, even if they are very long. About 42% of words in the dictionary begin with /p/, which is also the most common consonant in other positions. | | ===Consonants=== |
| | | The consonants are |
| Vowel proportions are as follows: '''a''' 42.3%, '''e''' 7.4%, '''i''' 20.4%, '''o''' 10.0%, '''u''' 20.0%.
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| | | Bilabials: p m b w |
| Consonant proportions are as follows: '''p''' 32.5%, '''m''' 12.6%, '''s''' 11.2%, '''b''' 11.0%, '''l''' 7.5%, '''r''' 7.3%, '''n''' 6.3%, '''t''' 5.6%, '''w''' 3.9%, '''d''' 2.0%. The sound /d/ occurs in native words only between vowels, and never as a geminate. Not surprisingly, words with /p/ as the only consonant are common:
| | Coronals: t n d l s |
| *'''pupupopa''' "umbrella"
| | Dorsals: r |
| *'''pipapi''' A state within Padempim (earlier known as Pipaippis)
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| *'''pepupop''' "to dream"
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| *'''pupapap''' "to cry"
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| *'''pipipi''' "municipal, city-level government"
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| *'''papapa''' "to squirm, slither"
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| But verbal inflections use /p/ very rarely (only in the subjunctive), leading to a less extreme balance in overall text. For example:
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| :'''Pampa pupapasi.'''
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| ::The baby cried.
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| changes the final ''-p'' in '''pupapap''' "cry" into an ''-s-''. This is due to an old sound change where ''p'' in some positions changed to ''f'' (as it still is in [[Poswa verbs|Poswa]]) and then to ''s''.
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| Additionally, around 800 years ago Pabappa underwent a different sound change whereby /p/ between vowels changed to /b/. Previously there had been even more use of /p/ in the language. At this time the language was called Papapfa. Most occurences of geminate /pp/ in modern Pabappa go back to clusters of dissimilar consonants such as /pf/.
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| If /w/ is considered an allophone of /u/, then /u/ is the only vowel that can occur in sequences, as other sequences such as /oo/ are shortened to singles in compounds.
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| ===Stress and division of compounds===
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| :''See [[Pabappa nouns]].'' | |
| As in its ancestor [[Babakiam]], and its sister languages such as [[Poswa]], all words in Pabappa are stressed on the initial syllable. There are no exceptions to this rule, although function words such as pronouns are generally pronounced with less obvious stress than content words such as nouns and verbs.
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| Pabappa has some very long words, both nouns and verbs:
| | The pronunciation of ''r'' varies widely according to the speaker and the place in the word, as it is the only dorsal consonant in the language and is thus very distinct. The ''l'' phoneme sometimes appears as IPA /j/ after a vowel. The other consonants have very little allophony. |
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| :'''Pop pampapubisi.'''
| | ===Vowels=== |
| ::We've remarried.
| | The vowel inventory is /a e i o u/, and this is the native Pabappa alphabet order as well. |
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| :'''Mas apsemabablesa?'''
| | When two vowels occur together, they are pronounced as a sequence, never as a diphthong. The only diphthongs are those involving a vowel followed by one of /l r/. |
| ::Do you give up?
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| :'''Pom popapimpemip islosa sipompi.'''
| | ==Nouns== |
| ::I bought a new chair.
| | Nouns have a (historically passive) object slot. This is derived from the B stem. These resemble BB compounds in Play, but with the extra cane in the middle. |
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| However, in Pabappa, sometimes compounds are broken up into two separate pieces, even if they are thought of as a unit by the speakers.
| | ==Verbs== |
| | Most verbs belong to the '''U-verb''' class, cognate to Poswa's, but radically expanded in Pabappa. This derives from the instrumental case, which is a shared Poswa/Pabappa innovation derived from a [[babakiam|Play]] plural infix. |
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| For example, the common word for weather is '''pubomblap''', a compound of ''pubom'' "top" and ''blap'' "sky". Thus, it means "the sky (on) top". (Not "the top of the sky", which would be ''*blapubom''.) When pronounced as a single word, the commonly perceived meaning is "weather". However, it would still be acceptable in Pabappa to say '''pubom blap''', pronouncing the compound as two separate words, and still intend the meaning "weather". It would merely be more ambiguous whether you were talking about the weather or simply the uppermost visible layer of the sky from which the weather pours down.
| | One difference between the U-verbs in the two languages is that in Pabappa, they are derived directly from the verbal stem, whereas in Poswa, they are derived from a possessed form of the stem. Thus, in Poswa, the U-verbs mean "to use one's (own) X", but in Pabappa, they mean "to use an X". Nonetheless, the meanings of the U-verbs in both languages are primarily idiomatic and this difference in origin means little. |
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| In general, the only compounds which cannot be broken up in this way are those in which one element of the compound is ambiguous as a standalone word. The Pabappa word '''tappibup''' means "pear (fruit)". This word is a compound because historically the Pabaps considered pears to be simply a kind of apple, namely the ''pup'' kind. (''Pup'' was originally an adjective and therefore follows the noun; the change of ''-p-'' to ''-b-'' is due to a sound rule.) but one cannot say ''*tappi pup'' for "pear" because in this compound, the morpheme ''pup'' is no longer meaningful on its own, since it occurs with this meaning only in this word.
| | ===Object slot=== |
| | :''LATE ADDITION (05:55, 3 November 2024 (PST)): it is possible that private verbs, which may be the same class as U-verbs or a subset of them, are in fact the ones that do not have an object slot.'' |
| | U-verbs (and most other verbs) have an object slot after the stem, which can either be a single consonant (usually '''-p-''' for reflexive and '''-s-''' for reciprocal), a noun classifier word, or empty. If it is empty, then the /-u/ suffix directly abuts the stem of the verb, and may cause stem changes. |
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| ===Historical sound changes===
| | Importantly, any verb with an object slot uses an A-stem, not the B-stem that generates the citation form. This A-stem can be very different from the B-stem, as they are both often inherited from Play with no analogy, and even in Play they were often quite different. Sound changes often drove them even further apart. This means also that some verbs collide in the A-stem but not in the B-stem, or vice versa. This means that there are verbs that can only be used transitively, or only intransitively, because in the other "voice" they collid with some other verb. However, Pabappa nonetheless has much analogy, and many A-stems were rebuilt after their B-stem. (Note also the conditional sound changes of /k š/ > /p s/ effectively undid Play's sound changes.) |
| ====The sound change champions====
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| Examples of sound changes:
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| *'''pepupop''' "dream", from ''fīp bubaešep žeše''
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| *'''rasumptam''' "frog", from ''vaipa babu bem žeptam''
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| *'''pulta-''' "to drink", from ''beiyabaup mibeas'' "to destroy thirst"
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| *'''wisi''' "pornography", from ''žužu žišafu''; compare the almost unchanged Poswa cognate ''žužužišaf''
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| *'''pumpassi''' "knee", from ''buba map pasi pi''
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| *'''popa''' "mermaid", from ''tūpbayaba''; however, this word is obsolete as a standalone morpheme
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| | The object slot construction is descended from Play's '''AB compounds'''. In Play, these behaved like head-initial noun compounds, rare at the time, and had to be capped with a further suffix that reflected the noun classifier of the head (not the object), thus turning the word back into a head-final compound as was the standard for the Play language. In Pabappa, they behave as verbs and the subject noun classifiers have been lost; instead, Pabappa marks the noun class of the object using what was once a standalone word of an open class but has now evolved into a closed-class infix. |
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| Note that these words exclude inflected forms, which would make the contrasts even starker. For example, the possessive suffix ''-i'' comes from the combination of an early Pabappa inflected form of a noun followed by a suffix such as ''bā'', later ''baba'' (all of the suffixes merged as ''-i''). Thus, since a noun already ending in ''-i'' is its own possessive, it could be said that the word for knee actually comes from ''buba map pasi pi bā''. But since this would work for all nouns, it does not set some nouns apart from others, and thus is not considered part of the "championship".
| | The object slot marks the classifier of the object, and in some cases may communicate the action well enough by itself that the object of the sentence can be omitted. This is comparable to the English object pronoun ''it'', except that in Pabappa there are a few dozen such morphemes corresponding to the various noun classes. This enables the object to be omitted even from some sentences in which the speaker has not recently mentioned it. Nonetheless, the object is most often named explicitly in the sentence and marked as such despite the presence of the object classifier infix on the verb. |
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| ====The many ways to /p/====
| | These object classifiers could also be called verb classifiers, but most Lava Bed languages with verb classifiers have them as prefixes before the verb, priming the listener by giving contextual information before the verb is heard. |
| Pabappa can derive /p/ from many unexpected paths, especially at the beginning or end of a word. Below are some examples of Pabappa words that begin with or contain /p/ that developed from other consonants in the parent language [[Babakiam]]. Note that the spelling in the first word in each chain is in Babakiam's Romanization, which uses ''v'' for /w/ and ''e'' for /ə/. Also, the Englsh translations given are those for the modern Pabappa words, and do not always match the meaning of the original Babakiam word. To keep the chains short, some steps are skipped:
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| *'''p''': [this is the regular outcome]
| | ====Secundative==== |
| *'''b''': ''bižip'' "suds, bubbles, foam" > bižep > biep > '''piep''' [this is the regular outcome in initial position]
| | The objects can include animates. It is possible that they will be linmuted, like in Play, to the "closest" object only, not the object that is the patient. '''BUT IT IS MORE LIKELY THESE OBJECTS REFER TO THE PATIENT OF THE ACTION, NOT THE INSTRUMENT, BECAUSE THEY INCLUDE PEOPLE, AND EVEN INCLUDE THE 1ST AND 2ND PERSON MARKERS.''' |
| *'''m''': ''bismibu'' "to crash, collide, bump into" > besmibu > bemibu > bemeby > bemʲy > bevy > beb > '''pep'''
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| *'''f''': ''fīp bubaešep'' "to sleep" >>> '''pepup'''
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| *'''t''': ''tuepbebaus'' "wheel" > twybbybos > pwybbybos > pubbybos > pubbibos > pobbibos > pobbos > poppos > poppo > '''popo'''
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| *'''n''': ''nuabaŋam'' "machine" > nwabagam > bwabagam > bwabgam > bubgam > bubžam > bubvam > pupfam > '''puppam'''
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| *'''s''': ''sevi pupta'' "sleep flower" > syre potta > sʷrepotta > frepotta > frepotta > frepta > fepta > '''pepta'''
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| *'''š''': [probably no match, although the path š>h>f>p exists so long as a word shifts from stressed to unstressed and then back again]
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| *'''ž''': ''šižu šes'' "bomb" >>> '''ippus'''<ref>This derivation may be a mistake (i didnt mark it as irregular), but even if so, the part of it that shifts ž > p is sound.</ref>
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| *'''k''': ''fuempika'' "to oscillate" > fwympika > fwumpika > fumpika > fompika > fompeka > pompeka > pompeša > pompefa > '''pompepa'''
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| *'''ŋ''': ''ŋuŋe'' "fat, blubber, weight" > gugy > gugi > žuži > vuvi > fuvi > '''pubi'''
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| ==Grammar== | | ====with passive verbs==== |
| Unlike Poswa, Pabappa has a copula verb, ''pip'', which means that "good ice cream" and "the ice cream is good" are different sentences.
| | this an lead to odd situations such as '''-t-''' after passive just by itself meaning "by a hammer/saw" (heavy toolk) because it is from -nt-. |
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| ===Nouns===
| | this will be an agreement morpheme. |
| :''See [[Pabappa nouns]].''
| | in fact |
| The inflection of Pabappa's nouns is similar to that of Poswa, but with less irregularity. A Poswa speaker can generally handle Pabappa nouns with no problem whereas a monolingual Pabappa speaker will have trouble learning the traps and tripups of the many irregular nouns of Poswa.
| | perhaps ALL passive verbs should agree ith noun class of subj |
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| ===Verbs===
| | if the -p is lost for 1st person passives, they would behave as actives from then on and the 1ps PAT pronoun would distinguish. |
| :''See [[Pabappa verbs]].
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| Pabappa verbs are again similar to those of Poswa, but much simpler. Verbs are inflected for tense only, unlike Poswa where they are inflected twice for person, and once each for tense, aspect,<ref>Not sure about this one</ref> mood, and voice. Thus, pronouns are used much more commonly than in Poswa.
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| ===Sample sentences===
| | this could also mean that Play -m plsuy any word means "tree branch" wannopa etc |
| *'''Blumpurpum pesaunamap piliblilabi.''' "the children walked across the frozen lake".
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| *'''Pom map peminiba.''' "I hear you."
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| *'''Pom pempomop peminiba.''' "I can hear the sea."
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| *'''Wipambi wapibup pisa.''' "The palm tree is tall."
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| == Dialects ==
| | if the -nopa sux is detached and copied to the sub |
| Historically Pabappa was divided into two main dialects: '''Piris Pabappa''', or "Blonde Pabappa", centered in the city of Paba, and '''Tarpabappa''', "Tara Pabappa", which encompassed everything else (''Tara'' was an ethnic name). Tarpabappa really is not close enough to be considered a dialect, but it was grouped with Pabappa for political purposes.
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| Genetically, Blonde Pabaps had more in common with the Poswob Empire to their north than with the so-called Tarpabaps, and their hair color was evidence of that. But Poswobs had little interest in Paba and considered them at best a rival in the goal of peaceful domination of the world. In the year 7414, Blop launched a "pacifist war" called '''Poblwopab''' against Paba, and installed many Poswob governors in the rural areas of the empire, and the Tarpabaps mostly came to identify as Poswobs and gave up their language, leaving only Piris Pabappa. Thus, while both the Pabaps and the Poswobs identify themselves as blonde people living in empires with dark-haired and dark-skinned people mixed within them, the Poswobs in Paba are primarily dark people.
| | ===Aspect=== |
| | :09:02, 21 May 2023 (PDT) |
| | Pabappa "freezes out" [[babakiam#Aspect|Play's open-class Lava Bed aspect system]] by having just a few aspects corresponding to traditional grammatical aspect categories. Play had been able to use any verb as an aspect marker, similar to English constructions like "eat to exhaustion". Poswa retains this as well. |
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| | There may be irregular shortening from -s- insertion before nasals, e.g. žam > am but žasm > žamm > zm > m. |
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| == Culture == | | ====Aspwct slots==== |
| :''See [[Pabap culture and sociolinguistics]].''
| | There are probably at least three aspect slots on every verb, but zero morphs are allowed, "like in a normal language". It is possible that all aspect markers are preceded by '''-a-''' since the tenses are marked by /i/ and /u/. This would be from Play /Za/, which would reflex to /a/ only some of the time, but enough to analogize from. |
| ===History=== | |
| :''For history from 1700 AD to 6000 AD, see [[Babakiam]].''
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| Pabappa is the language of a people who have not moved their capital city (Paba) for the last 7000 years. In the year 4200, it was just one of many small cities that were the capitals of independent empires, but Paba is the one that "won" ... not a war, but a peaceful struggle for economic and thus imperial domination that lasted a further 1500 years. From about 5500 onward, Paba was the unquestioned capital of the Padempim empire, but northern extensions of the empire which had broken away were beginning to outgrow the more compact and tightly controlled southern states. But even so, the dialects of these northern states were derived entirely from the dialect of Pabappa, not those of previously competitive rival cities such as Lunila.
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| ====Bammam Pampobapi====
| | *'''Slot 12''': accepts at least -ra- "do many at once; a lot; repeat/intermit" and another one meaning repeated over time (study>learn) |
| Bammam Pampobapi, "the War of the Toe", was an event that happened late in history when sailors from the empire of Falo invaded the southwest corner of the Pabap Empire by ship in order to claim more land for themselves. They anticipated an easy victory because many of the people in Bamma were already immigrants from Falo and the Pabaps in that area held no particular animosity for them. Moreover, the next state over was "majority-minority" and the Faloans felt it would be a barrier for Pabap soldiers that would help Falo more than it would hurt. But the Poswobs found out about the invasion and sent reinforcements over the mountains to help. However, the natives of Bamma did not like being used as a battleground for two warring empires, neither of which seemed to care how many Pabaps died. They figured that the Faloans would not want to kill them, and at worst would make them slaves. And so the Pabaps, under the command of a woman named Papsada, actually switched sides and helped the Faloans, bringing the war to a quick end with a victory for Falo. However the Faloan pirates did not actually act on behalf of Falo and thus did not attach their newfound land to Falo; they merely became the new rulers of it, and it remained nominally inside the Poswob Empire so that it could still be protected by the treaty from invasion by yet another power.
| | #'''a''', a zero morph, but appars only when other slots are filled (at least one) |
| | #'''ra''' many atsonce/intermit/rpt/alot |
| | #'''ta''' unknown |
| | #'''pta''' unknown |
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| Note that this invasion actually took place in [[Subumpam]]ese territory, but it had been turned over peacefully to Paba even though Subumpam had defeated Paba in a war not long before. Both Subumpam and Paba were so strongly pacifist that Subumpam didn't complain about the sudden switch of control from Subumpam's capital (Blop) to Paba's capital (Biospum, but usually just called Paba).
| | These can be analyzed as consonants + /a/. |
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| ===Modern cultural traits===
| | *'''Slot 24''': has 4 forms to do with success&difficulty. probably animate agents only, and there may be a morpheme that just indicates inanimacy rather than using a zero morph for it |
| The Pabaps are pacifist feminist nudist vegetarian environmentalists. They symbolize these five tenets with a five pointed star (''tatsa pabi'') which gives the empire's primary political party its name: '''Tatsapabiusa'''. This logo is sometimes also called a Peace Sphere (''moromadup''), and was not invented by the Pabaps, but rather taken from the indigenous Moonshine people inhabiting the mountains to their north.
| | #'''a''' zero morph (see above, /aa/ > /a/) |
| | #'''mpa''' attemp, try |
| | #'''psa''' try unsucc AGREEMENT MORPH |
| | #'''pa ~ ba''' do with difficulty but succeed |
| | #'''nsa''' try unsucc AGREEMENT MORPH (mp + ps) |
| | #'''pta''' involuntary (implies success) |
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| The idea behind the image is that the sphere is a bubble protecting humans from all evil and painful things, and the five points of the star symbolize the human body (arm, leg, leg, arm, head). However the Pabaps have found danger even in that imagery, saying that the symbol could be seen as a human trapped inside an egg or crushed against a round object. Thus they prefer to think of the five points of the star not as human limbs but as five pillars denoting their philosophy:
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| *'''Pacifism''': Pabaps cannot attack anyone at any time in any place for any reason. They cannot defend themselves against wild animals in their homes, or against being robbed while out on the street, or even when they're in a foreign land. They cannot own or manufacture weapons beyond the simple wooden knives they use to cut fruit and some hard furniture to sit on which is mostly too heavy to use as a weapon. In contrast to the Poswobs, and indeed, all of the other pacifist nations in the world, they reject the idea that violence in self defense is sometimes necessary for survival. They have survived for 4000 years without being conquered by enemies for several reasons:
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| ::* They are poor, and not many enemies would want to conquer them anyway,
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| ::*most of the immediately adjacent tribes are pacifists too, so they're sort of a buffer,
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| ::*Paba itself is a walled city;
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| ::*Despite being on the mainland, there are tall mountains surrounding the Pabaps on three sides, and so the only way to get in is from the east (where the Saks live) or by ocean;
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| ::*and there are plenty of other natural dangers such as wild animals keeping others out. However these animals have sometimes turned against the humans, and there are cases of lone animals such as pigs eating dozens of humans who had nothing to defend themselves with.
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| *'''Feminism''': Women should be in control of men, because women are more morally pure than men. This does not mean that men are slaves, just that they are best kept under the watch of a woman, be it their wife, their girlfriend, or a sort of religious advisor. "Police" watch the cities so thickly that the whole state feels like an oversized elementary school, with people asking the police for permissions to do simple things such as staying out alone at night to reach a relative's house on the other side of town. There is a group of police called the "people of the night" (''pasapta'') who are the only ones allowed to be outdoors after dark. The police are usually men because they are seen as being better able to handle physical threats. (The ultra-feminist Pabaps feel that true feminism means that although nobody should ever have to fight, if there is no alternative, men should be the ones doing it.) Just like everyone else, Paba's police are weaponless, but they tend to be people who are stronger than average.
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| *'''Nudism''' In the distant past Pabaps spent lots of money on clothes. The Poswobs still do, but the Pabaps dont because it's against the law to wear clothes unless absolutely necessary (such as in mountain areas when it gets cold). Thus it is impossible to rob someone, since they cannot carry money or anything else that they could give.
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| *'''Vegetarianism''' Hand in hand with pacifism comes the ideal that Pabaps, being human, should not be eating animals even if they find animals who had died of natural causes with no human effort. Even an animal that died of natural causes is taboo. The ideal diet consists entirely of fruits and vegetables with not even little insects added in. Those, they say, who eat meat are cursing themselves into a life of disease.
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| *'''Environmentalism''' This word is difficult to translate, since the level of technology is so low and the human population so small that Pabaps would not have to worry about things such as deforestation and environmental pollution even if they tried their hardest to destroy the world around them. Instead this fifth pillar of their belief system states that humans should stay within their natural "habitats", within which they can do anything they want, but they should never even venture outside even with peaceful intentions unless they are sure they will not be intruding on some other animals' living space. Thus there are no roads in the woods, or bridges across lakes, etc. in Pabap territory. This makes the city difficult to reach and adds to their protection.
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| Their culture is an extreme example of a pacifist hyper-egalitarian society, in which people are not allowed to be violent even towards dangerous animals, women are in control of men, and people wear no clothes, not to show their beauty or to be closer to nature, but because people had historically used expensive clothes to show their social status and Pabaps wanted to prevent that from happening again. (It stops them from carrying concealed weapons as well, although in reality, nudism is only mandatory in summer, because even though Paba is at 28N and has a climate similar to the US Gulf coast, it can get quite chilly in winter.) They also do not share the Poswob opposition to homosexuality or abortion, or the seemingly paradoxical traits of Poswob pacifism such as trapping and starving snakes so that they would be "fresh" when the Poswobs were ready to eat. To a Western eye, they might seem to be a parody of modern Western liberalism, except for the fact that they generally have strong religious beliefs and see all their traits as "conservative" from the point of view of their religion. On the other hand, these traits are mostly just social attitudes, in contrast to the Poswob empire, where similar "pacifist/feminist" ideas have proven unstable and need to be enforced by strict government regulations, often tied to the religion.
| | *'''Slot 36''': two statives and a cess/emph-perefcet |
| | #'''ma''' stative aspect. possibly cannot occur alone |
| | #'''ptama''' stative aspect. possibly implies involuntary action |
| | #'''ri''' unknown (mayber wrong slot) |
| | #'''mi''' cessative, emph perf ("do to completion", not "stop"). possibly inherently past tense due to -i |
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| To a citizen of Earth the Pabap culture seems very emasculated; and many of the other cultures on the planet Tebbala would agree. But it should be noted that in a society with so little technology as this, everyday life was full of physically demanding tasks, and that there were essentially no healthy men who did not have to perform at least some athletic work to get by each day, even people with positions such as politicians. This is due to the prevalent egalitarian ideology which states that no human (or animal) should be forced to be a servant for another, even if that other person's time could be more productively spent working on non-physical tasks.
| | ===gender=== |
| | the inherited Play gender ystsem only gives words for children: boy, girl, child, people. |
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| On a different mindset, Pabaps might say that having a large family is a sign of masculinity, and though not everyone had large families, many did, such that throughout history the Pabaps have been constantly expanding out of their homeland as it became overcrowded (at least by the standards of Tebbala), and moving into places where humans could barely survive. See [[Pabap culture]] for more info.
| | adults use dunamic gender (adjs) |
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| Since the Pabap homeland (called "Pabi Padempim" or "Isiblol") is governed by the Poswob empire, things such as abortion and homosexuality that have been ruled illegal in the central government are technically illegal here as well. But because of the technology (comparable to medieval Europe at best) there is no feasible way to enforce these laws, and in any case the central government has far greater problems to worry about, such as the huge holes in its territory inhabited by openly hostile armies who do not even allow the Poswob governors to visit, let alone enforce the laws. But even so, the central government has occasionally launched civil wars against the rebellious Pabaps, figuring that it would be safer to attack a weak ally than a strong enemy. The Pabap term for this is ''pampobapi'', meaning "war", since it is the only form of war they know of.
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| == Geography ==
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| Pabappa is spoken in warm climates, considered to be tropical because they are on the south coast, although temperatures are not as high as those associated with the tropics on Earth. Vegetation rather than temperature determines whether a given climate qualifies as tropical or not. It is largely urban, with most speakers living in the cities of Paba or Lunila (Lunila is an Andanese city).
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| ;Paba
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| Largest city in the lowlands; it is over 4000 years old. It is governed and mostly populated by "White Pabaps", the traditional ruling class of Paba and many other territories. Their rule is very strict, yet peaceful. People are not allowed on the streets at night without permission from the governors.
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| ;Lunila
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| The city of Lunila was where the god Lun was worshipped by the Andanese. (Sometiems the whole are was called "land of the gods", but the other parts of the empire didnt like this,.) The god's name in Andanese was Ini, and the city was named Ini Ilasa. Lasa = temple, cognate to Pabappa ''pala''.
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| Recently Pabaps in despair at their land being swarmed and assimilated into the Poswob Empire have begun moving out of the empire, generally into other tropical areas. Even though by doing so they are giving up their citizenship, for many emigrant families, this seemed like the right thing to do.
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| | ===copula=== |
| | might use transitive copula with object slots |
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| ==Notes== | | ==Notes== |
| <references /> | | <references /> |
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| [[Category:Teppala]] | | [[Category:Languages of Teppala]] |
| [[Category:Pabappa]]
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| [[Category:A priori conlangs]]
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- This page presents the language as a grammar organized by subject. See Pabappa/scratchpad for older chronological updates. FOR NOW, ALL PAGES ARE SCRATCHPADS.
Pabappa is the daughter language of Play that remained in the original Play homeland around the capital city.
Pabappa is a Lava Bed language, like its sister Poswa, and its parent language Play. The grammar is noticeably simpler than in these other languages, but still retains the classic Lava Bed trait of using suffixes and infixes that can affect all parts of a word, even the beginning, hence "erupting" and molding all of the available space.
Unlike Poswa, Pabappa continues to make use of compounds.
Phonology
Consonants
The consonants are
Bilabials: p m b w
Coronals: t n d l s
Dorsals: r
The pronunciation of r varies widely according to the speaker and the place in the word, as it is the only dorsal consonant in the language and is thus very distinct. The l phoneme sometimes appears as IPA /j/ after a vowel. The other consonants have very little allophony.
Vowels
The vowel inventory is /a e i o u/, and this is the native Pabappa alphabet order as well.
When two vowels occur together, they are pronounced as a sequence, never as a diphthong. The only diphthongs are those involving a vowel followed by one of /l r/.
Nouns
Nouns have a (historically passive) object slot. This is derived from the B stem. These resemble BB compounds in Play, but with the extra cane in the middle.
Verbs
Most verbs belong to the U-verb class, cognate to Poswa's, but radically expanded in Pabappa. This derives from the instrumental case, which is a shared Poswa/Pabappa innovation derived from a Play plural infix.
One difference between the U-verbs in the two languages is that in Pabappa, they are derived directly from the verbal stem, whereas in Poswa, they are derived from a possessed form of the stem. Thus, in Poswa, the U-verbs mean "to use one's (own) X", but in Pabappa, they mean "to use an X". Nonetheless, the meanings of the U-verbs in both languages are primarily idiomatic and this difference in origin means little.
Object slot
- LATE ADDITION (05:55, 3 November 2024 (PST)): it is possible that private verbs, which may be the same class as U-verbs or a subset of them, are in fact the ones that do not have an object slot.
U-verbs (and most other verbs) have an object slot after the stem, which can either be a single consonant (usually -p- for reflexive and -s- for reciprocal), a noun classifier word, or empty. If it is empty, then the /-u/ suffix directly abuts the stem of the verb, and may cause stem changes.
Importantly, any verb with an object slot uses an A-stem, not the B-stem that generates the citation form. This A-stem can be very different from the B-stem, as they are both often inherited from Play with no analogy, and even in Play they were often quite different. Sound changes often drove them even further apart. This means also that some verbs collide in the A-stem but not in the B-stem, or vice versa. This means that there are verbs that can only be used transitively, or only intransitively, because in the other "voice" they collid with some other verb. However, Pabappa nonetheless has much analogy, and many A-stems were rebuilt after their B-stem. (Note also the conditional sound changes of /k š/ > /p s/ effectively undid Play's sound changes.)
The object slot construction is descended from Play's AB compounds. In Play, these behaved like head-initial noun compounds, rare at the time, and had to be capped with a further suffix that reflected the noun classifier of the head (not the object), thus turning the word back into a head-final compound as was the standard for the Play language. In Pabappa, they behave as verbs and the subject noun classifiers have been lost; instead, Pabappa marks the noun class of the object using what was once a standalone word of an open class but has now evolved into a closed-class infix.
The object slot marks the classifier of the object, and in some cases may communicate the action well enough by itself that the object of the sentence can be omitted. This is comparable to the English object pronoun it, except that in Pabappa there are a few dozen such morphemes corresponding to the various noun classes. This enables the object to be omitted even from some sentences in which the speaker has not recently mentioned it. Nonetheless, the object is most often named explicitly in the sentence and marked as such despite the presence of the object classifier infix on the verb.
These object classifiers could also be called verb classifiers, but most Lava Bed languages with verb classifiers have them as prefixes before the verb, priming the listener by giving contextual information before the verb is heard.
Secundative
The objects can include animates. It is possible that they will be linmuted, like in Play, to the "closest" object only, not the object that is the patient. BUT IT IS MORE LIKELY THESE OBJECTS REFER TO THE PATIENT OF THE ACTION, NOT THE INSTRUMENT, BECAUSE THEY INCLUDE PEOPLE, AND EVEN INCLUDE THE 1ST AND 2ND PERSON MARKERS.
with passive verbs
this an lead to odd situations such as -t- after passive just by itself meaning "by a hammer/saw" (heavy toolk) because it is from -nt-.
this will be an agreement morpheme.
in fact
perhaps ALL passive verbs should agree ith noun class of subj
if the -p is lost for 1st person passives, they would behave as actives from then on and the 1ps PAT pronoun would distinguish.
this could also mean that Play -m plsuy any word means "tree branch" wannopa etc
if the -nopa sux is detached and copied to the sub
Aspect
- 09:02, 21 May 2023 (PDT)
Pabappa "freezes out" Play's open-class Lava Bed aspect system by having just a few aspects corresponding to traditional grammatical aspect categories. Play had been able to use any verb as an aspect marker, similar to English constructions like "eat to exhaustion". Poswa retains this as well.
There may be irregular shortening from -s- insertion before nasals, e.g. žam > am but žasm > žamm > zm > m.
Aspwct slots
There are probably at least three aspect slots on every verb, but zero morphs are allowed, "like in a normal language". It is possible that all aspect markers are preceded by -a- since the tenses are marked by /i/ and /u/. This would be from Play /Za/, which would reflex to /a/ only some of the time, but enough to analogize from.
- Slot 12: accepts at least -ra- "do many at once; a lot; repeat/intermit" and another one meaning repeated over time (study>learn)
- a, a zero morph, but appars only when other slots are filled (at least one)
- ra many atsonce/intermit/rpt/alot
- ta unknown
- pta unknown
These can be analyzed as consonants + /a/.
- Slot 24: has 4 forms to do with success&difficulty. probably animate agents only, and there may be a morpheme that just indicates inanimacy rather than using a zero morph for it
- a zero morph (see above, /aa/ > /a/)
- mpa attemp, try
- psa try unsucc AGREEMENT MORPH
- pa ~ ba do with difficulty but succeed
- nsa try unsucc AGREEMENT MORPH (mp + ps)
- pta involuntary (implies success)
- Slot 36: two statives and a cess/emph-perefcet
- ma stative aspect. possibly cannot occur alone
- ptama stative aspect. possibly implies involuntary action
- ri unknown (mayber wrong slot)
- mi cessative, emph perf ("do to completion", not "stop"). possibly inherently past tense due to -i
gender
the inherited Play gender ystsem only gives words for children: boy, girl, child, people.
adults use dunamic gender (adjs)
copula
might use transitive copula with object slots
Notes
