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Pabappa to English English to Pabappa
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WORD ORDER Pabappa is a case-inflecting language, so it can have very free word order. SVO is the most common word order, but word markings remain the same if the word order is changed. So for example, Tupa lespup boppam and Tupa boppam lespup both mean " Rain makes her happy ". The word order remains free when you switch to asking a question, since question markers are also independent of word order. So Lolapampapam ussipo? and Ussipo lolapampapam? all mean the same thing: "Is my sister still in bed?" Of course, changing the word order can bring emphasis to a different part of the sentence, and that is why there is so much variation and no set standard. Note that in these sentences, the words retain the same forms even when they are rearranged; this is because they are independent of each other and have no antecedents. Sometimes a word will have an antecedent, and this means that it may change form if it placed before its antecedent rather than after.
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