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Assorted References

  • gender
    • In gender

      …certain part of speech, usually nouns, require the agreement, or concord, through grammatical marking (or inflection), of various other words related to them in a sentence. In languages that exhibit gender, two or more classes of nouns control variation in words of other parts of speech (typically pronouns and adjectives…

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  • names and appellatives
    • \"Universal
      In name: Names and appellatives

      river is here a common noun, but its reference is specified by the extralinguistic context of the situation in which the sentence was said. Some names seem to belong more to the category of appellatives than to the category of names like Colorado in “the Colorado River.” For example, names…

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characteristics in

    • Abkhazo-Adyghian languages
      • \"Distribution
        In Caucasian languages: Grammatical characteristics

        …languages include an extremely simple noun system and a relatively complicated system of verb conjugation. There are no grammatical cases in Abkhaz and Abaza, and in the other languages only two principal cases occur: a direct case (nominative) and an oblique case, combining the functions of several cases—ergative, genitive, dative,…

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    • Afro-Asiatic languages
      • \"Distribution
        In Afro-Asiatic languages: The nominal system

        …masculine and feminine genders in nouns and pronouns (in the second and third person, and both singular and plural) is maintained widely but has been lost in some subdivisions of Chadic and Omotic. In Semitic and Cushitic languages, a noun may change its gender when it changes from singular to…

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    • Albanian language
      • In Albanian language: Grammar

        Nouns show overt gender, number, and three or four cases. An unusual feature is that nouns are further inflected obligatorily with suffixes to show definite or indefinite meaning: e.g., bukë ‘bread,’ buka ‘the bread.’ Adjectives—except numerals and certain quantifying expressions—and dependent nouns follow the noun…

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    • Amazigh languages
      • In Berber languages: Morphology and grammar

        Berber nouns are distinguished by masculine and feminine gender and by two syntactic states, status absolutus and status annexus. Internal plurals are common, a practice demonstrated by the change from the pattern a-u- to i-a- in the root -ghy-l: aghyul ‘donkey’ and ighyal ‘donkeys.’ The suffix…

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    • Anatolian languages
      • \"Distribution
        In Anatolian languages: Grammatical characteristics

        …seven cases—varying forms of the noun that mark its function in a sentence, such as subject, direct object, indirect object, or possessor—in the singular, but these are reduced to five in the later language, and the other Anatolian languages show a similarly simplified system. Suffixes marking cases are inherited from…

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    • Armenian llanguage
      • In Armenian language: Morphology and syntax

        The Modern Armenian noun has maintained and even developed this plan, especially in Eastern Armenian, which has the special locative ending -um in its declension. But, in comparison with Old Armenian (where case endings were different in singular and plural), Modern Armenian declension resembles rather the Turkish or…

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    • Athabaskan languages
      • \"Athabaskan
        In Athabaskan language family

        Nouns are classified by their number, shape, and animacy; for certain types of verbs these characteristics are reflected in the choice of verb stem. For example, Witsuwit’en verb stems include stəy ‘it (animate) lies’; stan ‘it (rigid) is (in position)’; səɬcoz ‘it (clothlike, flexible) is’;…

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    • Cushitic languages
      • In Cushitic languages: Morphology and grammar

        Nouns distinguish grammatical cases, of which there may originally have been only two: absolutive and nominative. Nouns also indicate number and gender (masculine and feminine, often semantically re-arranged in terms of augmentative and diminutive). Plural formatives are plentiful. Some Cushitic languages, such as Somali and…

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    • Dravidian languages
      • \"Dravidian
        In Dravidian languages: The nominal system

        Nouns carry number and gender and are inflected for case (role in the sentence, such as subject, direct object, or indirect object), as are pronouns and numerals, which are subclasses of nouns. As noted above, in most of the languages, adverbs of time and place…

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    • Indo-Aryan languages
      • \"Devanagari
        In Indo-Aryan languages: Grammatical modifications

        Noun forms incorporated into the verb system are numerous in early Indo-Aryan. Ṛgvedic has forms with affixes -ya and -tva functioning as future passive participles (gerundives)—e.g., vāc-ya- ‘to be said,’ kar-tva- ‘to be done.’ The Atharvaveda has, additionally, forms with -(i)tavya (parentheses indicate optional components…

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    • Indo-European morphology
      • \"Indo-European
        In Indo-European languages: Nominal inflection

        The inflectional categories of the noun were case, number, and gender. Eight cases can be reconstructed: nominative, for the subject of a verb; accusative, for the direct object; genitive, for the relations expressed by English of; dative, corresponding to the English preposition to, as in “give a prize to the…

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      • \"Indo-European
        In Indo-European languages: Changes in morphology

        In the noun, loss of endings has generally led to loss or great reduction of the case and gender systems, while ways have generally been found to salvage the distinction between singular and plural. In Modern Persian, for example, where all final syllables have been lost, the…

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    • Japanese language
      • \"Japanese
        In Japanese language: Syntax

        …that concludes a sentence—and the noun-modifying form exhibited by certain predicates. For example, in early Japanese otsu and tsuyoshi were conclusive forms, respectively, of the verb ‘to drop’ and the adjective ‘to be strong.’ When these words were used as noun modifiers, the forms were inflected as otsuru, tsuyoki. The…

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      • \"Japanese
        In Japanese language: Grammatical structure

        …formation of plurals for certain nouns (e.g., yama-yama ‘mountains,’ hito-bito ‘people’), and the use of doubling in adverbial phrases for emphasis (e.g., hayaku-hayaku ‘quickly, quickly’). Additionally, the repetition of phrases yields a number of characteristic constructions of Japanese—e.g., yome-ba yomu-hodo omoshiroi (literally, read-if read-to-the-extent interesting) ‘the more (I) read, the…

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    • Modern Greek language
      • \"Indo-European
        In Greek language: Morphology and syntax

        Nouns may be singular or plural—the dual is lost—and all dialects distinguish a nominative (subject) case and accusative (object) case. A noun modifying a second noun is expressed by the genitive case except in the north, where a prepositional phrase is usually preferred. The indirect…

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    • Navajo language
      • In Navajo language

        Nouns are either animate or inanimate. Animate nouns may be “speakers” (humans) or “callers” (plants and animals); inanimate nouns may be corporeal or spiritual. The Navajo fourth person is a grammatical category that enables the speaker to address someone who is present or within hearing…

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    • Semitic languages
      • \"Semitic
        In Semitic languages: The stem: root and pattern analysis

        Among basic nouns, for example, the pattern of the word seldom has any identifiable grammatical value; observe the varying syllable structures and vocalization patterns of Arabic kalb- ‘dog’ and bn- ‘son,’ in which decomposition along root-pattern lines (e.g., taking the stem kalb- to consist of a root…

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    • Slavic languages
      • \"Slavic
        In Slavic languages: Noun forms

        The declension of pronouns has been preserved in all Slavic languages. Old combinations of adjectives with pronouns gave rise to the definite forms of adjectives (e.g., feminine dobra-ja ‘good-the’). Such forms still contrast with the indefinite forms in South Slavic, but in the…

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    • South American Indian languages
      • In South American Indian languages: Grammatical characteristics

        …word roots are nominal (nouns) or verbal (verbs) and may be converted into the other class by derivational affixes; in languages like Quechua or Araucanian, many word roots are both nominal and verbal. Languages like Yuracare form many words by reduplication (the repetition of a word or a part…

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    • Sumerian language
      • In Sumerian language: Characteristics

        In the noun, gender was not expressed. Plural number was indicated either by the suffixes -me (or -me + esh), -hia, and -ene, or by reduplication, as in kur + kur “mountains.” The relational forms of the noun, corresponding approximately to the cases of the Latin declension,…

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    • Tagalog language
      • \"Austronesian
        In Austronesian languages: Verb systems

        …of the above sentences one noun is marked as being in focus. Focused personal nouns (proper names or common nouns that can be used as proper names, such as ‘Mother’ or ‘Father’) are preceded by si. Focused common nouns are preceded by ang, and the combination is commonly called the…

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    • Tocharian languages
      • In Tocharian languages: Linguistic characteristics

        The noun shows less of its Indo-European origins. However, it preserves three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and traces at least of the nominative, accusative, genitive, vocative, and ablative cases. Most of the attested cases are built up by the addition of postpositions to the oblique…

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There are no grammatical cases in Abkhaz and Abaza, and in the other languages only two principal cases occur: a direct case (nominative) and an oblique case, combining the functions of several cases—ergative, genitive, dative,…","publisher":{"name":"Encyclopedia Britannica","@type":"Organization","logo":{"url":"https://corporate.britannica.com/wp-content/themes/eb-corporate/_img/logo.png","@type":"ImageObject"}},"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"article"},"studentArticle":false,"initialLoad":true}

    noun

    grammar

    Learn about this topic in these articles:

    Assorted References

    • gender
      • In gender

        …certain part of speech, usually nouns, require the agreement, or concord, through grammatical marking (or inflection), of various other words related to them in a sentence. In languages that exhibit gender, two or more classes of nouns control variation in words of other parts of speech (typically pronouns and adjectives…

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    • names and appellatives
      • Universal Postal Union
        In name: Names and appellatives

        river is here a common noun, but its reference is specified by the extralinguistic context of the situation in which the sentence was said. Some names seem to belong more to the category of appellatives than to the category of names like Colorado in “the Colorado River.” For example, names…

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    characteristics in

      • Abkhazo-Adyghian languages
        • Distribution of the Caucasian languages
          In Caucasian languages: Grammatical characteristics

          …languages include an extremely simple noun system and a relatively complicated system of verb conjugation. There are no grammatical cases in Abkhaz and Abaza, and in the other languages only two principal cases occur: a direct case (nominative) and an oblique case, combining the functions of several cases—ergative, genitive, dative,…

          Read More
      • Afro-Asiatic languages
        • Distribution of the Afro-Asiatic languages.
          In Afro-Asiatic languages: The nominal system

          …masculine and feminine genders in nouns and pronouns (in the second and third person, and both singular and plural) is maintained widely but has been lost in some subdivisions of Chadic and Omotic. In Semitic and Cushitic languages, a noun may change its gender when it changes from singular to…

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      • Albanian language
        • In Albanian language: Grammar

          Nouns show overt gender, number, and three or four cases. An unusual feature is that nouns are further inflected obligatorily with suffixes to show definite or indefinite meaning: e.g., bukë ‘bread,’ buka ‘the bread.’ Adjectives—except numerals and certain quantifying expressions—and dependent nouns follow the noun…

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      • Amazigh languages
        • In Berber languages: Morphology and grammar

          Berber nouns are distinguished by masculine and feminine gender and by two syntactic states, status absolutus and status annexus. Internal plurals are common, a practice demonstrated by the change from the pattern a-u- to i-a- in the root -ghy-l: aghyul ‘donkey’ and ighyal ‘donkeys.’ The suffix…

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      • Anatolian languages
        • Distribution of the Anatolian languages.
          In Anatolian languages: Grammatical characteristics

          …seven cases—varying forms of the noun that mark its function in a sentence, such as subject, direct object, indirect object, or possessor—in the singular, but these are reduced to five in the later language, and the other Anatolian languages show a similarly simplified system. Suffixes marking cases are inherited from…

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      • Armenian llanguage
        • In Armenian language: Morphology and syntax

          The Modern Armenian noun has maintained and even developed this plan, especially in Eastern Armenian, which has the special locative ending -um in its declension. But, in comparison with Old Armenian (where case endings were different in singular and plural), Modern Armenian declension resembles rather the Turkish or…

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      • Athabaskan languages
        • Athabaskan languages
          In Athabaskan language family

          Nouns are classified by their number, shape, and animacy; for certain types of verbs these characteristics are reflected in the choice of verb stem. For example, Witsuwit’en verb stems include stəy ‘it (animate) lies’; stan ‘it (rigid) is (in position)’; səɬcoz ‘it (clothlike, flexible) is’;…

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      • Cushitic languages
        • In Cushitic languages: Morphology and grammar

          Nouns distinguish grammatical cases, of which there may originally have been only two: absolutive and nominative. Nouns also indicate number and gender (masculine and feminine, often semantically re-arranged in terms of augmentative and diminutive). Plural formatives are plentiful. Some Cushitic languages, such as Somali and…

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      • Dravidian languages
        • Dravidian languages: distribution
          In Dravidian languages: The nominal system

          Nouns carry number and gender and are inflected for case (role in the sentence, such as subject, direct object, or indirect object), as are pronouns and numerals, which are subclasses of nouns. As noted above, in most of the languages, adverbs of time and place…

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      • Indo-Aryan languages
        • Devanagari script
          In Indo-Aryan languages: Grammatical modifications

          Noun forms incorporated into the verb system are numerous in early Indo-Aryan. Ṛgvedic has forms with affixes -ya and -tva functioning as future passive participles (gerundives)—e.g., vāc-ya- ‘to be said,’ kar-tva- ‘to be done.’ The Atharvaveda has, additionally, forms with -(i)tavya (parentheses indicate optional components…

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      • Indo-European morphology
        • Indo-European languages in contemporary Eurasia
          In Indo-European languages: Nominal inflection

          The inflectional categories of the noun were case, number, and gender. Eight cases can be reconstructed: nominative, for the subject of a verb; accusative, for the direct object; genitive, for the relations expressed by English of; dative, corresponding to the English preposition to, as in “give a prize to the…

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        • Indo-European languages in contemporary Eurasia
          In Indo-European languages: Changes in morphology

          In the noun, loss of endings has generally led to loss or great reduction of the case and gender systems, while ways have generally been found to salvage the distinction between singular and plural. In Modern Persian, for example, where all final syllables have been lost, the…

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      • Japanese language
        • Japanese kana symbols
          In Japanese language: Syntax

          …that concludes a sentence—and the noun-modifying form exhibited by certain predicates. For example, in early Japanese otsu and tsuyoshi were conclusive forms, respectively, of the verb ‘to drop’ and the adjective ‘to be strong.’ When these words were used as noun modifiers, the forms were inflected as otsuru, tsuyoki. The…

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        • Japanese kana symbols
          In Japanese language: Grammatical structure

          …formation of plurals for certain nouns (e.g., yama-yama ‘mountains,’ hito-bito ‘people’), and the use of doubling in adverbial phrases for emphasis (e.g., hayaku-hayaku ‘quickly, quickly’). Additionally, the repetition of phrases yields a number of characteristic constructions of Japanese—e.g., yome-ba yomu-hodo omoshiroi (literally, read-if read-to-the-extent interesting) ‘the more (I) read, the…

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      • Modern Greek language
        • Indo-European languages in contemporary Eurasia
          In Greek language: Morphology and syntax

          Nouns may be singular or plural—the dual is lost—and all dialects distinguish a nominative (subject) case and accusative (object) case. A noun modifying a second noun is expressed by the genitive case except in the north, where a prepositional phrase is usually preferred. The indirect…

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      • Navajo language
        • In Navajo language

          Nouns are either animate or inanimate. Animate nouns may be “speakers” (humans) or “callers” (plants and animals); inanimate nouns may be corporeal or spiritual. The Navajo fourth person is a grammatical category that enables the speaker to address someone who is present or within hearing…

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      • Semitic languages
        • Semitic languages: distribution
          In Semitic languages: The stem: root and pattern analysis

          Among basic nouns, for example, the pattern of the word seldom has any identifiable grammatical value; observe the varying syllable structures and vocalization patterns of Arabic kalb- ‘dog’ and bn- ‘son,’ in which decomposition along root-pattern lines (e.g., taking the stem kalb- to consist of a root…

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      • Slavic languages
        • Slavic languages: distribution in Europe
          In Slavic languages: Noun forms

          The declension of pronouns has been preserved in all Slavic languages. Old combinations of adjectives with pronouns gave rise to the definite forms of adjectives (e.g., feminine dobra-ja ‘good-the’). Such forms still contrast with the indefinite forms in South Slavic, but in the…

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      • South American Indian languages
        • In South American Indian languages: Grammatical characteristics

          …word roots are nominal (nouns) or verbal (verbs) and may be converted into the other class by derivational affixes; in languages like Quechua or Araucanian, many word roots are both nominal and verbal. Languages like Yuracare form many words by reduplication (the repetition of a word or a part…

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      • Sumerian language
        • In Sumerian language: Characteristics

          In the noun, gender was not expressed. Plural number was indicated either by the suffixes -me (or -me + esh), -hia, and -ene, or by reduplication, as in kur + kur “mountains.” The relational forms of the noun, corresponding approximately to the cases of the Latin declension,…

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      • Tagalog language
        • Austronesian languages
          In Austronesian languages: Verb systems

          …of the above sentences one noun is marked as being in focus. Focused personal nouns (proper names or common nouns that can be used as proper names, such as ‘Mother’ or ‘Father’) are preceded by si. Focused common nouns are preceded by ang, and the combination is commonly called the…

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      • Tocharian languages
        • In Tocharian languages: Linguistic characteristics

          The noun shows less of its Indo-European origins. However, it preserves three numbers (singular, dual, and plural) and traces at least of the nominative, accusative, genitive, vocative, and ablative cases. Most of the attested cases are built up by the addition of postpositions to the oblique…

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