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Particles CONJUNCTIONS
All conjunctions in Pabappa are formed with the word-modifying prefix pu-, which means approximately "that which ...". So any Pabappa word can be turned into a conjunction. pu- modifies the word it attaches to due to a historical lenition process. The modification is dependent on the initial consonant of the word, and can be predicted with the table below:
Unmodified Word Stem Conjunction Meaning Rule
epa- purpepa making use of 0 --> purp
bum pubrum which b --> pubr
debba- pudebba originating from d --> pud
jalam- jalam knowing j --> j
lubob- pulubob departing from l --> pul
missa- pumissa returning to m --> pum
numpa- punumpa at least n --> pun
pup- wup and p --> w
ralnim- puralnim across r --> pur
sebra- pusebra entering, moving through s --> pus
timbla- pudimbla because of t --> pud
wapte- wapte without w --> w
Although all nouns and verbs can become conjunctions, there are some words in Pabappa which have been formed by this process and have almost no use outside of conjunction, and they are listed below:

publop is used to express the meaning of "exclusive or, xor" in a phrase.

purpebe means "avoiding" and is used to give negative meaning to a following phrase. There is a simpler word, wep, with a similar meaning, but the context usually gives a more active meaning to purpebe and that is why it is used.

wampata in honor of

wapam means "when", "at the time of".

wimpep means "between".

wuba means "to what extent".

wem means "that, what, which, who".

wam means "again".

pubrum is a sort of all-purpose interrogative.

wa means "where" (derived from the obsolete word pa, meaning "place").

pudim means "why" or "because" and was derived from an abbreviation of pudimbla which is the regular form of the same word.

After a conjunction, any word that is in its subclause is considered to be a word by itself, and is therefore in the nominative case. Thus pom, purpebeba tabbe means "I, avoiding magic" even though the two nouns are both nominative. Note that the conjunction is inflected for 1st person singular because it is performing the role of a verb.

Some conjunctions are derived from suffixes rather than nouns. These suffixes are always of the pattern pV(C) and therefore the resulting conjunctions are always of the pattern wV(C):


Pabappa English
wep no, not
wes but
wis if
wup and


Most conjunctions are used to connect two clauses:


Sampasliabet tubapabmaliapa, wes peto wipsimpepla pispa.     I've heard of storm windows, but this is ridiculous.



But as in English, Pabappa can also begin a sentence with a conjunction:


Wup tasapirbomila pompula.     And they were all upset.



When a whole clause containing a coordinating conjunction takes a case inflection, the inflection only goes on the words after the last conjunction. Usually there is only one word after the final conjunction.


Poblurpep mensampa. I bought soap.
Poblurpep tappam. I bought water.
Poblurpep mensampa wup (poblurpep) tappam. I bought soap and water. (I bought soap and I bought water)
Poblurpep mensam blup tappam. I bought soap and water. (I bought them together in a package labeled "soap and water")



OTHER PARTICLES