Pabappa nouns

Pabappa has nouns.

Number

Pabappa does not have a grammatical category for number in the sense that plural nouns take plural adjectives and plural verbs or anything of the sort. Most nouns are lexically unmarked for number, meaning that possimi can mean "flag" or "flags" equally often and both uses are correct. A few nouns can only refer to a singular, mostly words for body parts and familial relations. Many of the body part words have suppletive dual and/or plural forms.

The vast majority of nouns, however, are unmarked for number, and take the suffix -pum to specifically indicate a plural. -Pum is not normally used when a number modifier such as pibi "four" is specified; if it were, it would indicate four "pluralities", not four individuals. This suffix is cognate to the Poswa -bum suffix and itself becomes -bum after a noun ending in a vowel. The Poswa -by suffix no longer exists in Pabappa, and even those words in which it had become fossilized as -p now generally behave as singulars and take the additional suffix -pum to form the plural.

Body parts

Some words for body parts in Pabappa have suppletive dual or plural forms. Most of these are words for pairs. For example, pep means one hand. Pobop, the dual form, indicates both of one person's hands; and the plural form peple indicates any number of hands greater than one, including two, regardless of whom they belong to. Thus two people shaking hands are touching their peple, but one person pulling on a tow chain with both of his hands is straining his pobop.

Other body parts are seen as plural by default, and need a suffix to indicate the singular. For example, wopsisi means "teeth", but to say "tooth" one adds the singulative suffix -pa to form wopsisiba. The change of /p/ > /b/ is due to a very common sound rule.

Noun cases

Pabappa's noun cases are similar to those of Poswa, but the patterns are much simpler.

-a

Most nouns ending in -a belong to this declension. It is one of the simplest declensions. Below is the declension of pompada "thorn":

pompada

Case	Free	Possessed(3p)	Attached
Nominative	pompada
Accusative	pompadap
Locative	pompadam
Possessive	pompadas
Essive	pompadel
Instrumental	pompador

-i

Most nouns ending in -i belong to this declension. It is one of the simplest declensions. Below is the declension of petiti "rose":

petiti

Case	Free	Possessed(3p)	Attached
Nominative	petiti
Accusative	petitip
Locative	petitim
Possessive	petitis
Essive	petitil
Instrumental	petitir

-u

Most nouns ending in -a belong to this declension. It is one of the simplest declensions. Below is the declension of wupsu "winner's stand, rostrum":

wupsu

Case	Free	Possessed(3p)	Attached
Nominative	wupsu
Accusative	wupsup
Locative	wupsum
Possessive	wupsus
Essive	wupsul
Instrumental	wupsur