Lifashian: Difference between revisions

All declensions are productive, although the majority of contemporary loanwords is assigned to one of the first three. Historically, the termination (and not the noun class) of the original word determines the declension, with original ''-e'' words being mostly assigned to the neuter fifth declension unless explicitely animate (mostly given names or nouns referring to humans borrowed from Ligurian), in which case they are either masculine or feminine fourth declension nouns. Words ending in a back rounded vowel or in a voiced stop in the donor language in most cases end in ''-i'' and are sixth declension nouns; this is again mostly noticeable in the plethora of Ligurian loans (such as e.g. Lig. ''mandillo'' {{IPA|[mãˈdilu]}} borrowed as ''mangdili'' {{IPA|[mæŋˈdili]}} "handkerchief").<br/>Words which ended in voiced stops or sonorants in the donor language typically also show an ''-i'' (and are therefore sixth declension nouns) in Lifashian, but this is not the case for most such words borrowed in the last century (as e.g. ''jáz'' "jazz").

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'' are epicene and form first declension nouns that can take either masculine or feminine concord (articles and adjectives) depending on the actual referent; many nouns which refer to humans obey such rules no matter which declension they belong to (as e.g. ''hulamá'' "scientist"). 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 (female navigator) is different, ''robbánetá''.</ref>.First declension neuters also include nouns in ''-pít-tél'', which are often calques of Greek nouns in ''-λόγιον'', such as ''syahtapíttél'' (clock) and ''hámorpíttél'' (calendar).<br/> Other nouns that denote people, especially if borrowed, are also epicene nouns, such as ''hartís'' (citizen (the ending only is borrowed)), ''kosmonawt'' (astronaut), ''pangk'' (punk), ''syahír'' (poet); in some dialects, inherited ''helbart'' (child) is used as epicene too (but the standard has the feminine form ''helbartá''). A select number of inherited nouns do not refer to people but have a different grammatical gender than the one of its declension, most notably ''napat'' (night) and the plurale tantum ''haréni'' (mind), which are feminine first declension nouns.