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Lifashian: Difference between revisions
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Nearly every noun, whether native or borrowed, is declined according to one of the six declensions; however, transcriptions of foreign anthroponyms and toponyms are indeclinable whenever they do not end in one of the typical endings of the declensions. See e.g. toponyms such as ''Peru'' "Peru", ''Konggo'' "Congo", or ''Wanwátu'' "Vanuatu". | Nearly every noun, whether native or borrowed, is declined according to one of the six declensions; however, transcriptions of foreign anthroponyms and toponyms are indeclinable whenever they do not end in one of the typical endings of the declensions. See e.g. toponyms such as ''Peru'' "Peru", ''Konggo'' "Congo", or ''Wanwátu'' "Vanuatu". | ||
While the declensions are generally tied to grammatical gender, this is sometimes overridden by natural gender. Most notably, the agent noun-forming suffixes ''-éc'' and ''-tél'' form first declension nouns that can take either masculine or feminine concord (articles and adjectives) depending on the actual referent. In some cases, neuter gender is an option too, as with ''nesfertél'', traditionally either masculine or feminine for "messenger", nowadays frequently used as a neuter noun with the meaning of "messenger, chat program", a calque from English. | While the declensions are generally tied to grammatical gender, this is sometimes overridden by natural gender. Most notably, the agent noun-forming suffixes ''-éc'' and ''-tél'' form first declension nouns that can take either masculine or feminine concord (articles and adjectives) depending on the actual referent. In some cases, neuter gender is an option too, as with ''nesfertél'', traditionally either masculine or feminine for "messenger", nowadays frequently used as a neuter noun with the meaning of "messenger, chat program", a calque from English<ref>See also, for a similar process where grammatical gender is productively used in semantic loans, ''robbán'', an originally Arabic loan which means "navigator" as a masculine first declension noun, but in recent decades has gotten the new meaning (calqued from English) of "web browser" as a neuter third declension noun. In this case, the feminine form is different, ''robbánetá''.</ref>. | ||
====1st declension (masculine)==== | ====1st declension (masculine)==== | ||