Poswa nouns

Poswa preserves the six noun cases of the parent language with almost no changes in meaning or form, apart from regular sound changes. The possessive has weakened into a genitive when used with definite nouns, however. e.g. teppiopwas mupawabub "the length of the rope". Poswa has not added any new cases; so there is still no dative case and the various uses of the locative case are not distinguished.

• Nominative: The default form of the word, used as the subject of a sentence and also in genitive phrases when not indicating possession; paslam "fire"; paslam boša "fire hearth; fireplace".
• Accusative: Always marked by -p, shows the object of a verb. Žazba pasliap blabwambi "The girl put out the fire".

Number

There is no "grammatical" plural in Poswa in the sense that there is not a separate table of forms for plural nouns in each declension. To pluralize a noun, either -by or -bum is added. The difference between the two is that -by implies separation amongst the individual items being described, whereas -bum implies that they are working together. An animate noun can take either of the two suffixes depending on which meaning is intended; inanimate nouns have a fixed plural form, however, in a manner similar to the way nouns have genders in Spanish and some IE languages.

Possession

Possession markers can be placed on any noun, e.g. papwopwa "dog"; papwopio "my dog"; poppup "knife" ---> poppuwio "my knife". The stem to which the possession marker attaches is called a soppu.