West Germanic grammar
| West Germanic grammar |
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Nouns |
This page outlines the fundamental elements of the grammar of the West Germanic language
Gender
West Germanic preserves all of the Proto-Indo-European genders: masculine (mannlich), feminine (wiflich) and neuter (sakulich). This is more often than not unrelated to biological gender, for example, the West Germanic word for 'stone' (tare stan) is masculine. Words that describe a male or female such as 'man' (tare mann) and 'woman' (ta froe) often do correspond to sex, but with the notable exception of 'girl' (tat maiden), which is neuter due to its diminutive suffix '-en'. The ending of a noun can strongly suggest the gender. For instance, if a noun ends in a vowel, it is likely that it is feminine, but this is not a universal rule.
e.g. ta katte (the cat), ta blome (the flower), ta luvu (the love) - but tat ore (the ore)
Nouns ending in the following suffixes: -had, -ung, -shipe, are also feminine.
e.g. ane froehad (a freedom), ane tidung (a newspaper), ane froendshipe (a friendship)
Cases
West Germanic inflects nouns, adjectives and pronouns into four cases known as the nominative (nemniendlich), genitive (agnindlich), dative (forgivendlich) and accusative (raiendlich). The case of a particular noun depends on the grammatical function of the noun in the sentence.
- Nominative (Wa?): the subject of a sentence, the thing doing the action
- Genitive (Was?): the possessor of something or the object of certain other prepositions
- Dative (Wam?): the indirect object, as in when an object is given to someone, or the object of certain other prepositions
- Accusative (Wone?): the direct object, the thing which is directly receiving the action or the object of certain prepositions
Example: tare hund (engl. the dog)
| NOM | tare hund | ta hunde |
| GEN | tas hund | tare hunde |
| DAT | tam hund | tone hunde |
| ACC | tone hund | ta hunde |
