Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order . Nouns are inflected for number and case ; pronouns and adjectives (including participles ) are inflected for number, case, and gender ; and verbs are inflected for person , number, tense , aspect , voice , and mood . The inflections are often changes in the ending of a word, but can be more complicated, especially with verbs.
58-550: Thus verbs can take any of over 100 different endings to express different meanings, for example regō "I rule", regor "I am ruled", regere "to rule", regī "to be ruled". Most verbal forms consist of a single word, but some tenses are formed from part of the verb sum "I am" added to a participle; for example, ductus sum "I was led" or ductūrus est "he is going to lead". Classified things (represented by common nouns) belong to one of three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). The gender of
116-438: A grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender . The values present in a given language, of which there are usually two or three, are called
174-443: A noun , e.g. vir bonus or bonus vir "a good man", although some kinds of adjectives, such as adjectives of nationality ( vir Rōmānus "a Roman man") usually follow the noun. Latin is a pro-drop language ; that is, pronouns in the subject are usually omitted except for emphasis, so for example amās by itself means "you love" without the need to add the pronoun tū "you". Latin also exhibits verb framing in which
232-400: A bridge ( German : Brücke , f. ) more often used the words 'beautiful', 'elegant', 'pretty', and 'slender', while Spanish speakers, whose word for bridge is masculine ( puente , m. ), used 'big', 'dangerous', 'strong', and 'sturdy' more often. However, studies of this kind have been criticized on various grounds and yield an unclear pattern of results overall. A noun may belong to
290-401: A given class because of characteristic features of its referent , such as sex, animacy, shape, although in some instances a noun can be placed in a particular class based purely on its grammatical behavior. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each. Many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in
348-445: A language relate to sex, such as when an animate –inanimate distinction is made. Note, however, that the word "gender" derives from Latin genus (also the root of genre ) which originally meant "kind", so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning. A classifier, or measure word , is a word or morpheme used in some languages together with a noun, principally to enable numbers and certain other determiners to be applied to
406-462: A language which uses classifiers normally has a number of different ones, used with different sets of nouns. These sets depend largely on properties of the things that the nouns denote (for example, a particular classifier may be used for long thin objects, another for flat objects, another for people, another for abstracts, etc.), although sometimes a noun is associated with a particular classifier more by convention than for any obvious reason. However it
464-417: A noun manifests itself in two principal ways: in the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, and in modifications of other related words ( agreement ). Grammatical gender manifests itself when words related to a noun like determiners , pronouns or adjectives change their form ( inflect ) according to the gender of noun they refer to ( agreement ). The parts of speech affected by gender agreement,
522-468: A singular meaning, e.g. castra "a camp", litterae "a letter", nūptiae "a wedding". Nouns are divided into three genders , known as masculine , feminine , and neuter . The difference is shown in the pronouns and adjectives that refer to them, for example: To a certain extent, the genders follow the meanings of the words (for example, winds are masculine, tree-names feminine): Neuter nouns differ from masculine and feminine in two ways: (1)
580-497: A system include later forms of Proto-Indo-European (see below ), Sanskrit , some Germanic languages , most Slavic languages , a few Romance languages ( Romanian , Asturian and Neapolitan ), Marathi , Latin , and Greek . Here nouns that denote animate things (humans and animals) generally belong to one gender, and those that denote inanimate things to another (although there may be some deviation from that principle). Examples include earlier forms of Proto-Indo-European and
638-477: A verbal noun can stand for the object of the implied verb (called an "objective genitive"): A genitive noun can stand for the subject of the implied verb (called a "subjective" genitive): A frequent type of genitive is the partitive genitive, expressing the quantity of something: The dative case means "to" or "for". It is frequently used with verbs of saying or giving: It can also be used with certain adjectives: Grammatical gender In linguistics ,
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#1732894176339696-527: A way that sounds like the masculine declensions in South-Eastern Norwegian dialects. The same does not apply to Swedish common gender, as the declensions follow a different pattern from both the Norwegian written languages. Norwegian Nynorsk , Norwegian Bokmål and most spoken dialects retain masculine, feminine and neuter even if their Scandinavian neighbors have lost one of the genders. As shown,
754-399: Is a comprehensive beginning Latin textbook . Chapters introduce related grammatical topics and assume little or no prior knowledge of Latin grammar or language. Each chapter has a collection of translation exercises created specifically for the book, most drawn directly from ancient sources. Those from Roman authors ( Sententiae Antiquae —lit., "ancient sentences" or "ancient thoughts") and
812-485: Is a third available gender, so nouns with sexless or unspecified-sex referents may be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. There are also certain exceptional nouns whose gender does not follow the denoted sex, such as the German Mädchen , meaning "girl", which is neuter. This is because it is actually a diminutive of "Magd" and all diminutive forms with the suffix -chen are neuter. Examples of languages with such
870-529: Is also found in Dravidian languages . (See below .) It has been shown that grammatical gender causes a number of cognitive effects. For example, when native speakers of gendered languages are asked to imagine an inanimate object speaking, whether its voice is male or female tends to correspond to the grammatical gender of the object in their language. This has been observed for speakers of Spanish, French, and German, among others. Caveats of this research include
928-515: Is also possible for a given noun to be usable with any of several classifiers; for example, the Mandarin Chinese classifier 个 ( 個 ) gè is frequently used as an alternative to various more specific classifiers. Grammatical gender can be realized as inflection and can be conditioned by other types of inflection, especially number inflection, where the singular-plural contrast can interact with gender inflection. The grammatical gender of
986-613: Is assigned to one of the genders, and few or no nouns can occur in more than one gender. Gender is considered an inherent quality of nouns, and it affects the forms of other related words, a process called "agreement" . Nouns may be considered the "triggers" of the process, whereas other words will be the "target" of these changes. These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners , pronouns , numerals , quantifiers , possessives , adjectives , past and passive participles , articles , verbs , adverbs , complementizers , and adpositions . Gender class may be marked on
1044-418: Is masculine (meaning "lake") its genitive singular form is Sees , but when it is feminine (meaning "sea"), the genitive is See , because feminine nouns do not take the genitive -s . Gender is sometimes reflected in other ways. In Welsh , gender marking is mostly lost on nouns; however, Welsh has initial mutation , where the first consonant of a word changes into another in certain conditions. Gender
1102-430: Is not enough to constitute a gender system. In other languages, the division into genders usually correlates to some degree, at least for a certain set of nouns, such as those denoting humans, with some property or properties of the things that particular nouns denote. Such properties include animacy or inanimacy, " humanness " or non-humanness, and biological sex . However, in most languages, this semantic division
1160-416: Is one of the factors that can cause one form of mutation (soft mutation). For instance, the word merch "girl" changes into ferch after the definite article . This only occurs with feminine singular nouns: mab "son" remains unchanged. Adjectives are affected by gender in a similar way. Additionally, in many languages, gender is often closely correlated with the basic unmodified form ( lemma ) of
1218-450: Is only partially valid, and many nouns may belong to a gender category that contrasts with their meaning, e.g. the word for "manliness" could be of feminine gender, as it is in French with "la masculinité" and "la virilité". In such a case, the gender assignment can also be influenced by the morphology or phonology of the noun, or in some cases can be apparently arbitrary. Usually each noun
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#17328941763391276-415: Is reserved for abstract concepts derived from adjectives: such as lo bueno , lo malo ("that which is good/bad"). Natural gender refers to the biological sex of most animals and people, while grammatical gender refers to certain phonetic characteristics (the sounds at the end, or beginning) of a noun. Among other lexical items, the definite article changes its form according to this categorization. In
1334-536: Is similar to diēs except for a short e in the genitive and dative singular reī . In addition to the above there are some irregularly declined nouns, mostly borrowed from Greek, such as the name Aenēās "Aeneas" (1st declension masculine). The vocative is nearly always the same as the nominative, except in 1st and 2nd declension masculine singular words, such as Aenēā! "Aeneas!" and domine! "master!/lord!". Some words, such as deus "god", have no separate vocative, however. The nominative case
1392-610: Is the object: Further cases mean "of" (genitive case), "to/for" (dative case), and "with" (ablative case). Nouns for people have a separate form used for addressing a person (vocative case). In most nouns for women and girls, the vocative is the same as the nominative. Some nouns, such as the names of cities and small islands, and the word domus "home", have a seventh case called the locative , for example Rōmae "in Rome" or domī "at home"; however, most nouns do not have this case. The genitive, dative and ablative cases are called
1450-408: Is used for the subject of an active or a passive verb: It is also used for the complement of a copula verb such as est "he is" or factus est "he became": The vocative case is used when addressing someone: The accusative case is used for the object of a sentence: It is also used as the subject of an infinitival clause dependent on a verb of speaking or the like: It can be
1508-426: Is usually feminine), or may be arbitrary. In a few languages, the assignment of any particular noun (i.e., nominal lexeme, that set of noun forms inflectable from a common lemma) to one grammatical gender is solely determined by that noun's meaning, or attributes, like biological sex, humanness, or animacy. However, the existence of words that denote male and female, such as the difference between "aunt" and "uncle"
1566-431: The genders of that language. Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each. Many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex or gender . According to one estimate, gender is used in approximately half of the world's languages . According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in
1624-608: The vocative (used for addressing someone). Nouns for places have a seventh case, the locative ; this is mostly found with the names of towns and cities, e.g. Rōmae "in Rome". There is no definite or indefinite article in Latin, so that rēx can mean "king", "a king", or "the king" according to context. Latin word order tends to be subject–object–verb ; however, other word orders are common. Different word orders are used to express different shades of emphasis. (See Latin word order .) An adjective can come either before or after
1682-525: The "oblique" cases. The order in which the cases are given in grammar books differs in different countries. In Britain and countries influenced by Britain, the order nominative, vocative, accusative is used as in the table below. In the United States, in grammars such as Gildersleeve and Lodge's Latin Grammar (1895), the traditional order is used, with the genitive case in the second place and ablative last. In
1740-455: The "triggers" of the process, because they have an inherent gender, whereas related words that change their form to match the gender of the noun can be considered the "target" of these changes. These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners , pronouns , numerals , quantifiers , possessives , adjectives , past and passive participles , verbs , adverbs , complementizers , and adpositions . Gender class may be marked on
1798-515: The Barnes & Noble College Outline Series, the textbook is currently in its seventh edition. The 6th edition has been translated into Korean (2005), with a Korean translation of the 7th edition pending; the 7th edition has been translated into Chinese (2017). The most recent edition includes a foreword, preface, comments on the revised edition, maps, and numerous black and white photographs. It also provides help with pronunciation and information about
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1856-430: The ablative singular. The genitive plural in some nouns is -um , in others -ium . (For details, see Latin declension .) 3rd declension nouns can be of any gender. It is not usually possible to guess the genitive of a noun from the nominative: dux "leader" has genitive ducis but rēx "king" has rēgis ; pater "father" has genitive patris but iter "journey" has itineris . For this reason
1914-408: The behavior of associated words." Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine, and neuter; or animate and inanimate. Depending on the language and the word, this assignment might bear some relationship with the meaning of the noun (e.g. "woman"
1972-400: The circumstances in which it occurs, and the way words are marked for gender vary between languages. Gender inflection may interact with other grammatical categories like number or case . In some languages the declension pattern followed by the noun itself will be different for different genders. The gender of a noun may affect the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, particularly
2030-476: The classified thing is realized by the last syllables of the adjectives, numbers and pronouns that refer to it: e.g. male animals such as hic vir "this man" and hic gallus "this cock", female animals such as haec mulier "this woman" and haec gallīna "this chicken", and either sexually undifferentiated animals such as hoc ovum "this egg" or stuff in general such as hoc "this thing". Specific kinds of stuff and abstract things also have one of
2088-500: The complement of another word which is itself accusative: It can also be used with a place name to refer to the destination: The accusative is also used after various prepositions (especially those that imply motion towards): Another use of the accusative is to give a length of time or distance: A genitive noun can represent a kin: A genitive noun can stand for the object of mental processes such as misereor "I pity" and oblīvīscor "I forget": A genitive noun attached to
2146-782: The earliest family known to have split off from it, the extinct Anatolian languages (see below ). Modern examples include Algonquian languages such as Ojibwe . Here a masculine–feminine–neuter system previously existed, but the distinction between masculine and feminine genders has been lost in nouns (they have merged into what is called common gender ), though not in pronouns that can operate under natural gender. Thus nouns denoting people are usually of common gender, whereas other nouns may be of either gender. Examples include Danish and Swedish (see Gender in Danish and Swedish ), and to some extent Dutch (see Gender in Dutch grammar ). The dialect of
2204-481: The effect for German speakers has also led to a proposal that the effect is restricted to languages with a two-gender system, possibly because such languages are inclined towards a greater correspondence between grammatical and natural gender. Another kind of test asks people to describe a noun, and attempts to measure whether it takes on gender-specific connotations depending on the speaker's native language. For example, one study found that German speakers describing
2262-497: The genitive is always given in dictionaries, and can be used to discover the remaining cases. 4th and 5th declension nouns are less common. They decline like the following ( manus "hand", genū "knee", diēs "day"): 4th declension nouns are usually masculine, but a few, such as manus "hand" and anus "old lady", are feminine. There are only four 4th declension neuter nouns. 5th declension nouns (except for diēs (m) "day") are usually feminine. rēs "thing"
2320-747: The merger of masculine and feminine in these languages and dialects can be considered a reversal of the original split in Proto-Indo-European (see below ). Some gender contrasts are referred to as classes ; for some examples, see Noun class . In some of the Slavic languages , for example, within the masculine and sometimes feminine and neuter genders, there is a further division between animate and inanimate nouns—and in Polish , also sometimes between nouns denoting humans and non-humans. (For details, see below .) A human–non-human (or "rational–non-rational") distinction
2378-414: The nominative and vocative singular. In the 2nd declension, the genitive plural in some words is optionally -um , especially in poetry: deum or deōrum "of the gods", virum or virōrum "of men". Neuter nouns such as bellum "war" have -a in the nominative plural. In neuter nouns, the vocative and accusative are always the same as the nominative; the genitive, dative, and ablative are
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2436-937: The nominative singular, like puella "girl" are known as 1st declension nouns , and so on. The following table shows the declension of puella "girl" (1st declension), dominus "lord, master" (2nd declension masculine), and bellum "war" (2nd declension neuter): 1st declension nouns are usually feminine, except for a few referring to men, such as agricola "farmer" or poēta "poet". The nouns fīlia "daughter" and dea "goddess" have dative and ablative plural fīliābus, deābus . The locative case ends in -ae , pl. -īs , e.g. Rōmae "in Rome", Athēnīs "in Athens". 2nd declension nouns in -us are usually masculine, but those referring to trees (e.g. pīnus "pine tree") and some place names (e.g. Aegyptus "Egypt") are feminine. A few 2nd declension nouns, such as vir "man" and puer "boy", lack endings in
2494-438: The noun itself, but can also be marked on other constituents in a noun phrase or sentence. If the noun is explicitly marked, both trigger and target may feature similar alternations. As an example, we consider Spanish , a language with two gender categories: "natural" vs "grammatical". "Natural" gender can be masculine or feminine, while "grammatical" gender can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. This third, or "neuter" gender
2552-1022: The noun itself, but will also always be marked on other constituents in a noun phrase or sentence. If the noun is explicitly marked, both trigger and target may feature similar alternations. Three possible functions of grammatical gender include: Moreover, grammatical gender may serve to distinguish homophones. It is a quite common phenomenon in language development for two phonemes to merge, thereby making etymologically distinct words sound alike. In languages with gender distinction, however, these word pairs may still be distinguishable by their gender. For example, French pot ("pot") and peau ("skin") are homophones /po/ , but disagree in gender: le pot vs. la peau . Common systems of gender contrast include: Nouns that denote specifically male persons (or animals) are normally of masculine gender; those that denote specifically female persons (or animals) are normally of feminine gender; and nouns that denote something that does not have any sex, or do not specify
2610-455: The noun, and sometimes a noun can be modified to produce (for example) masculine and feminine words of similar meaning. See § Form-based morphological criteria , below. Agreement , or concord, is a grammatical process in which certain words change their form so that values of certain grammatical categories match those of related words. Gender is one of the categories which frequently require agreement. In this case, nouns may be considered
2668-654: The noun. They are not regularly used in English or other European languages, although they parallel the use of words such as piece(s) and head in phrases like "three pieces of paper" or "thirty head of cattle". They are a prominent feature of East Asian languages , where it is common for all nouns to require a classifier when being quantified—for example, the equivalent of "three people" is often "three classifier people". A more general type of classifier ( classifier handshapes ) can be found in sign languages . Classifiers can be considered similar to genders or noun classes, in that
2726-551: The old Norwegian capital Bergen also uses common gender and neuter exclusively. The common gender in Bergen and in Danish is inflected with the same articles and suffixes as the masculine gender in Norwegian Bokmål . This makes some obviously feminine noun phrases like "a cute girl", "the well milking cow" or "the pregnant mares" sound strange to most Norwegian ears when spoken by Danes and people from Bergen since they are inflected in
2784-458: The path of motion is encoded into the verb rather than shown by a separate word or phrase. For example, the Latin verb exit (a compound of ex and it ) means "he/she/it goes out". In this article a line over a vowel (e.g. ē) indicates that it is long . Most Latin nouns have two numbers, singular and plural: rēx "king", rēgēs "kings". A few nouns, called plūrālia tantum ("plural only"), although plural in form, have
2842-401: The plural nominative and accusative forms end in -a , e.g. bella "wars", corpora "bodies"; (2) the subject (nominative) and object (accusative) cases are identical. Nouns in Latin have a series of different forms, called cases of the noun, which have different functions or meanings. For example, the word for "king" is rēx when it is the subject of a verb, but rēgem when it
2900-404: The popularly used Wheelock's Latin (1956, 7th edition 2011) and Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar (1903), however, the vocative is placed at the end. The following table shows the endings of a typical noun of the 3rd declension. If Gildersleeve and Lodge's order is preferred, click on the symbol "GL" in the seventh column in the table below; for Wheelock's order click on "Wh": Sometimes
2958-458: The possibility of subjects' "using grammatical gender as a strategy for performing the task", and the fact that even for inanimate objects the gender of nouns is not always random. For example, in Spanish, female gender is often attributed to objects that are "used by women, natural, round, or light" and male gender to objects "used by men, artificial, angular, or heavy." Apparent failures to reproduce
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#17328941763393016-592: The reading passages that follow may be either direct quotations or adapted paraphrases of the originals. Interspersed in the text are introductory remarks on Ancient Roman culture. At the end of each chapter is a section called "Latina Est Gaudium — Et Utilis!", which means "Latin Is Fun — And Useful!" This section introduces phrases that can be used in conversation (such as "Quid agis hodie?", meaning "How are you today?"), and in particular comments on English words and their relation to Latin. Originally published in 1956 in
3074-498: The same as the masculine. Most 2nd declension neuter nouns end in -um but vīrus "poison" and vulgus "crowd" end in -us . Third declension nouns have various patterns of declension. Some decline like the following: mīles "soldier", urbs "city", corpus "body": There are some variations, however. A few, such as vīs, vim, vī "force", have accusative singular -im and ablative singular -ī ; some, like ignis "fire", optionally have -ī instead of -e in
3132-466: The same endings, e.g. -ēs and -ibus , are used for more than one case. Since the function of a word in Latin is shown by ending rather than word order, in theory rēgēs dūcunt could mean either "the kings lead" or "they lead the kings". In practice, however, such ambiguities are rare. Latin nouns are divided into different groups according to the patterns of their case endings. These different groups are known as declensions . Nouns with -a in
3190-563: The sex of their referent, have come to belong to one or other of the genders, in a way that may appear arbitrary. Examples of languages with such a system include most of the modern Romance languages , the Baltic languages , the Celtic languages , some Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Hindi ), and the Afroasiatic languages . This is similar to systems with a masculine–feminine contrast, except that there
3248-651: The singular, the article is: el (masculine), and la (feminine). Thus, in "natural gender", nouns referring to sexed beings who are male beings carry the masculine article, and female beings the feminine article (agreement). el the. MASC . SG abuelo grandfather el abuelo the.MASC.SG grandfather "the grandfather" la the. FEM . SG abuela grandmother la abuela the.FEM.SG grandmother Wheelock%27s Latin Wheelock's Latin (originally titled Latin and later Latin: An Introductory Course Based on Ancient Authors )
3306-589: The three grammatical genders. There are also two numbers : singular ( mulier "woman") and plural ( mulierēs "women"). As well as having gender and number, nouns, adjectives, and pronouns have different endings according to their function in the sentence, for example, rēx "the king" (subject), but rēgem "the king" (object). These different endings are called "cases". Most nouns have five cases: nominative (subject), accusative (object), genitive ("of"), dative ("to" or "for"), and ablative ("with" or "in"). Nouns for people (potential addressees) have
3364-456: The way in which the noun inflects for number and case . For example, a language like Latin , German or Russian has a number of different declension patterns, and which pattern a particular noun follows may be highly correlated with its gender. For some instances of this, see Latin declension . A concrete example is provided by the German word See , which has two possible genders: when it
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