West Germanic grammar

West Germanic grammar
Nouns Verbs Articles Adjectives Pronouns Adverbial phrases Conjugation Sentence structure Declension Modal particles

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' (täre stan) is masculine. Words that describe a male or female such as 'man' (täre mann) and 'woman' (ta froe) often do correspond to sex, but with the notable exception of 'girl' (tät 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 tät 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 (Wäs?): the possessor of something or the object of certain other prepositions
• Dative (Wäm?): 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: täre hund (engl. the dog)

NOM	täre hund	ta hunde
GEN	täs hund	täre hunde
DAT	täm hund	tone hunde
ACC	tone hund	ta hunde