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(1p)	Attached
Nominative	pompada	pompadi
Accusative	pompadap	pompadip
Locative	pompadam	pompadim
Possessive	pompadas	pompadis
Essive	pompadel	pompadil
Instrumental	pompador	pompadir

-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 -u 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	wupsi
Accusative	wupsup	wupsip
Locative	wupsum	wupsim
Possessive	wupsus	wupsis
Essive	wupsul	wupsil
Instrumental	wupsur	wupsir

Possessives

Pabappa uses suffixes to denote possession of nouns. These are covered above under the noun declensions, but can be conceived of as separate entities as well. Most often the suffix is -i or something ending in -i. Note that not all words change:

pimblom "wand" : pimblomi "my wand"

pobap "candy" : pobapi "my candy"

panna "spoon" : panni "my spoon"

But

pampi "soap" : pampi "my soap"

pambi "bottle" : pambi "my bottle"

Pronouns

The first person singular pronoun, pom, is derived from a word meaning "on me, inside me" rather than just "me". The locative of the first person singular pronoun is thus doubly marked. The second person singular pronoun, mas, is derived from the genitive, thus meaning "your, yours" and its genitive is thus doubly marked.

Intransitive 1s pom 1p pap 2s mas 2p

Transitive 1s 1p 2s 2p 1s — pompo poma 1p papop — pama 2s masa massop — 2p —

For the transitives, the agent is on the leftmost column and the patient is on the topmost row. Thus one can say:

Pompo₁ sipompi₂ blubur.₃

I for us₁ bought₂ milk.₃ ("I bought us milk.")

Where pompo means "I ... us".