Questions tagged [declension]
The declension tag has no usage guidance.
38 questions
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How common is it for languages with declension to decline names like nouns?
This question pertains specifically to languages that both have case-marking on nouns and do that case-marking through declension rather than solely things like adpositions.
Some Indo-European ...
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Why is it to distinguish inflection in the two cases by conjugation and declension?
Inflection for verbs is called conjugation, and for nouns, pronouns and adjectives are called declension. Why are "conjugation" and "declension" in use when "inflection" ...
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How much can highly inflected language speakers understand their root systems?
For examle in Latin, the noun amicus has the root amic, the adjective magnus has the root magn.
But did the average romans really understand these roots?
Could they understand their meaning by hearing ...
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4
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Errors of inflection in languages other than English -- more common or less common in very inflected languages?
Note: While a question similar has been suggested and the replies indicate that even uneducated Russians do not make mistakes as even educated English speakers tend to, I am firstly not convinced this ...
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What is the behind the declension "obrovskýma" in the phrase "obrovskýma očima" in Czech?
I stumbled upon this phrase in a book. I then looked at Wiktionary under obrovský, and noticed that the form "obrovskýma" does not appear there. As far as I can tell it is the neuter plural ...
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Czech declension of Masculine Names ending in -a
I have come across several examples where at least in the genitive of a two-word phrase the name ending -a does not decline, e.g., svatého Sáva (vs. standard and more common Sávy), Alexandra (or ...
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How to deal with modern Indian people's first names and surnames when declining in Sanskrit?
I have a question about how to deal with people's names when using Sanskrit in a modern context.
Let's say I want to say "Ãnanda is in the forest", I can say वन आनन्दः. Ignoring any possible ...
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Possible Sanskrit word "pas" as declension case [closed]
I would like to ask if it is possible that the word pas, which I think could be a Sanskrit word, is a declined case of an existing word (e.g. the nominative or vocative case).
If not, could it be a ...
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Why does Proto-Indo-Aryan *ẓ seem to have different outcomes despite sharing the same phonological context?
It is well known that Proto-Indo-Aryan *s had an allophone *z in voiced contexts. Due to some phonetic changes (i.e. RUKI law and the shift *śt > ṣṭ), they both could undergo retroflexion, thus ...
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Declension of Sanskrit words "kil" and "kila"
I have been using this search engine for Sanskrit grammar: https://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/grammar.html, specifically declension, and I was wondering about some results returned by the search.
Indeed, ...
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2
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How does case inflection work on the head noun in internally headed relative clauses?
I have read that some languages use internally headed relative clauses; so, for example, instead of saying "the man that we met yesterday went home today"; they position the shared noun in a ...
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Is there reason to believe that English will drop declension of personal pronouns "soon?" [closed]
I am sure I am not alone in having to think about whether to use "I" or "me" etc. and I also I sure I and others get it wrong frequently. What's really the point in retaining these ...
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Can an object be in functional case A even though it's declined like case B?
Pardon my word choice, since I'm obviously lacking the background in linguistics. I know that language-specific questions are off-topic, yet I still like to use Finnish as an example, since it spawned ...
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Are there commonly accepted graphic symbols for common declension forms?
Some linguistic declension forms are found in many languages:
Gender
Singular / Plural
Past, Present, Future
Indication, Condition, Imperation
Case: Nominative, Accusative, Dative etc.
Is there a ...
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1
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Historical explanations for soft/hard declensions in Czech
Declension patterns in Czech is traditionally categorized into hard and soft ones based on the final consonant of the stem. Materials for learners, e.g., Lída's Czech Step by Step or Michael's ...
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Words with "hybrid" declension (in Latin, or borrowed by English from Latin)?
There is a recently-coined technical usage (in mathematics) of the word "anima", borrowed from Latin to English. The funny thing about this coinage is that the coin-ers of the term insist on ...
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Is it possible in Sanskrit to distinguish between the names Rāma and Rām i.e. राम and राम् when used in a sentence?
Consider this sentence:
रामो लेखन्या लिखति
Is रामो in that sentence always referring to someone named राम (Rāma) or could it be equally possible that the person's name was राम् (Rām)? Are names like ...
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1
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How did Latin drop noun declension?
Latin has/had noun cases, while modern Romance languages don't. I wonder if the transition can be observed in written forms. Are there examples from different historic moments?
A side question: ...
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What is the meaning of the Latin names of grammatical cases (in general, not in Latin)?
I cannot find any source explaining the Latin names of grammatical cases. I am especially curious in the names of the less common cases, like in Finnish:
nominative
genitive
accusative
partitive
...
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Is a language without inflection a language without subject?
Subject is defined as the argument which agrees with the affixes of the verb. But if a language does not have inflectional affixes, can you state that this particular language does not have syntactic ...
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Is there a language where in declension number is affixed peripherally to case?
Is there a language where, given that number and case are affixed seperately not fusionally, a noun can have the structure of , e.g. ithawen = itha-w-en [woman]+GEN+PL ("of the women, the women's")? I ...
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How do I decline a noun phrase?
First, let me say that I'm bad at grammar. Everything I know about grammar I've learned because I want to make my own languages.
Second, I've created an ergative-absolutive language (I'm learning as ...
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How is declension class represented in Distributed Morphology?
Does somebody knows a good paper or textbook that would have a Distributed Morphology (DM) approach to declension class? Ora Matushansky writes that it is an "underlying nominal property influencing ...
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Are there natural languages with the following properties (seen in Esperanto)?
Are there natural languages that have the following set of properties:
The language possesses nouns, adjectives, and definite articles
Nouns and adjective are both inflected for number and case (or ...
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Languages preserving loanword inflections
Erudite English has an interesting practice where the plural form of loanwords may follow the inflectional grammar of the source language. Thus "campi" as well as "campuses", "minima" as well as "...
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Origin of gen./abl. "pitur" genitive of "pitā́" ("father") in Sanskrit
How did the Sanskrit gen./abl. singular of pitr-/pitā́ ("father") came to be pitur (and the genitive of the entire noun class as well, of course)? The evolution of all other forms (even pitā́, which ...
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Declensions in Polish
Declension, as far as I know, corresponds to the act of creating boxes where you can pile up nouns that follow the same rule when inflected (generally due to cases). Classical Latin is often said to ...
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What is it called when one "conjugates" adjectives?
If one conjugates verbs and declines nouns, what is it called when an adjective is "conjugated," as it is in French to agree in gender and plurality with the noun? (E.g. "beau" is masculine singular ...
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Are there languages with more cases than Latin?
I am currently busy with a project that involves production rules.
From my years in Latin at college, I learned about the six basic ones. But if I am not confused, ablative could represent several ...
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What is the origin of declension/conjugation classes?
Languages with declension and conjugation usually have multiple declension and conjugation classes.
If one were to invent a language with declension or conjugation, one would probably introduce only ...
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Old Norse kné: a- stem or wa- stem?
The neuter noun kné follows a-stem declension.
But it comes from Proto-Germanic *knewą. This seems to be a wa-stem.
Then why does it follow a-stem declension? Did Scandinavians force it to, even ...
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Is there something deeper behind the “verb classes swapping” of the subjunctive endings in Romance languages?
I first asked this question in https://spanish.stackexchange.com/q/15929/11155
However the Spanish community has not found any answer yet and the phenomenon is observable in many Romance languages. I ...
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declining numerals in Old English
Disclaimer : this thread is perhaps off-topic. I thank you for your indulgence since I couldn't ask such a question on https://english.stackexchange.com/ .
I read in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the ...
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Plural form declension with numbers in Turkish
When naming some number of objects, there's only one plural form in English (2 dogs, 3 dogs, 10 dogs). But in Slavic languages like Polish the form changes depending on the number (2 psy, 4 psy, 5 ...
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Old Norse: Noun declension gen. sg. -s or -ar?
I am using A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic and An Introduction to Old Norse (by E. V. Gordon) as my resoources.
In An Introduction, it is said that:
Some nouns declined otherwise as ...
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Common change of conjugation of the verbs in spoken languages?
Is the natural tendency of the verbs in spoken language towards more or fewer conjugations?
For example, in my language, we use conjugations related to time, person, etc.
In English we have ...
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Is there some intrinsic relationship between the nominative plural and genitive singular?
In Latin the similarity between the nominative plural and genitive singular is most striking:
First: porta (Nom/Sing) and portae (Nom/Pl), portae (Gen/Sing) and portarum (Gen/Pl)
Second: servus (Nom/...
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Why did English lose declensions while German retained them?
Why did (or more specifically what caused) English lose declensions whilst they were retained in German? I ask as I have recently been reading into the various Germanic languages and it struck me that ...
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