Nordaþ nouns: Difference between revisions
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*[[Nordaþ pronouns|Pronouns]]<br /> | *[[Nordaþ pronouns|Pronouns]]<br /> | ||
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*[[Nordaþ verbs|Verbs]]<br /> | *[[Nordaþ verbs|Verbs]]<br /> | ||
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Revision as of 20:17, 13 December 2005
The Nordaþ language has nouns that express concrete objects, groups and classes of objects, qualities, feelings and other abstractions. All nouns have a conventional grammatical gender. Countable nouns inflect for number (singular and plural).
Gender
Nordaþ language |
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All Nordaþ nouns have one of three grammatical genders: Masculine, neuter, and feminine. Unlike most languages, Nordaþ uses mostly the neuter gender as its genders are not arbitrarily assigned. Unlike many other languages, adjectives do not agree in number nor gender with nouns and they usually come before the noun. Additionally, they do not inflect as in Latin.
Pronouns also take gender. When any pronoun is unknown, the neuter may be used. It is akin to English "it", though without the negative conotations. Nordaþ also has an "it" that takes English's singular "they" function. It only ever takes the neuter gender. Note - Nordaþ has a separate it with which verbs from "it" are conjugated as they would 'lec' (they).
Proper names when not referring to a person are usually neuter. The exception is when a word in the proper segment takes a masculine or feminine gender.
Like pronouns, verbs, et al their endings are based on whether they are a front-vowelled word or a back-vowelled word.
Number
Nouns in the Nordaþ language are inflected to show singular and plural. Plurals end in -en and are all considered to be neuter. Also, in some cases, Nordaþ will use a singular where English uses plural. For example, the English "pants" can be taken to mean either one pair of pants or many. In Nordaþ, the singular word is broksaïï, but the plural is broksaïn. In this case, the singular refers to only one.
Diminutive
In Nordaþ, the diminutive is -let*/-lït*. It conveys the meaning of smallness or dearness. The L is dropped if the stem ended with an L.