Pabappa

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, 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.

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.

Vowel proportions are as follows: a 42.3%, e 7.4%, i 20.4%, o 10.0%, u 20.0%.

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:

• pupupopa "umbrella"
• pipapi (place name)
• pupapap "to cry"
• pipipi "municipal, city-level government"
• papapa "to squirm, slither"

But verbal inflections use /p/ more sparsely leading to a less extreme balance in overall text. This is because around 800 years ago Pabappa underwent a rendaku-like 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/.

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.

The sound change champions

Examples of sound changes:

• rasumptam "frog", from vaipa babu bem žeptam
• pulta "to drink", from beiyabaup mibeas "to destroy thirst"
• wisi "pornography", from žužu žišafu, compare the almost unchanged Poswa cognate žužužišaf

Grammar

Unlike Poswa, Pabappa has a copula verb, pisa, which means that "good ice cream" and "the ice cream is good" are different sentences. It comes from the earlier form pys i bu, where the pys- prefix is related to Moonshine's singular nominative noun markers. Since Pabappa words can never end in two consonants, the -i- of pisa is sometimes elided (it never changes for tense), which leads to the pronunciation -psa, which is sometimes added on to the previous word in the sentence (usually a noun) as though it were a noun inflection that turns the noun into a verb. However, it is generally spelled out in full form.

Sample sentences

• Blumpurpum pesaunamap piliblilabi. "the children walked across the frozen lake".
• Pom map peminiba. "I hear you."
• Pom pempomop peminiba. "I can hear the sea."
• Wipambi wapibup pisa. "The palm tree is tall."