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Strong Noun
A strong noun is a phenomenon of more conservative Germanic languages like Icelandic, and also of Irish, marked in each by case or number markings. Icelandic In the Icelandic language, a strong noun is one that falls into one of four categories, depending on the endings of the ''characteristic cases'', i.e. the nominative and genitive singular and the nominative plural. For masculines this gives the following four-way split to be counted as strong: :The latter two cases end in ''-s'' and ''-ar''. :The latter two cases end in ''-s or -ar'' and ''-ir''. :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' and ''-ir''. :Irregular but not a weak noun. For feminines this looks like: :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' or ''-r'' and ''-ar''. :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' and ''-ir''. :The latter two cases end in ''-ar'' or ''-ur'' and ''-ur'' or ''-r''. :Irregular but not a weak noun. Most neuters are strong, and end in ''-s'' in the genitive singular with the exception of ''fé'', g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linguistic Conservatism
In linguistics, a conservative form, variety, or feature of a language is one that has changed relatively little across the language's history, or which is relatively resistant to change. It is the opposite of innovative, innovating, or advanced forms, varieties, or features, which have undergone relatively larger or more recent changes. On the other hand, an ''archaic'' form is chronologically old and rarely used in the modern language, and an ''obsolete'' form has fallen out of use altogether. A conservative linguistic form, such as a word or sound feature, is one that remains closer to an older form from which it evolved, relative to cognate forms from the same source. For example, the Spanish word ''caro'' and the French word ''cher'' both evolved from the Latin word ''cārum''. The Spanish word, which is more similar to the common ancestor, is more conservative than its French cognate. A language or language variety is said to be conservative if it has fewer innovations (in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German language, German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch language, Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of Standard language, unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Icelandic Language
Icelandic (; is, íslenska, link=no ) is a North Germanic language spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national language. Due to being a West Scandinavian language, it is most closely related to Faroese, western Norwegian dialects, and the extinct language, Norn. The language is more conservative than most other Germanic languages. While most of them have greatly reduced levels of inflection (particularly noun declension), Icelandic retains a four- case synthetic grammar (comparable to German, though considerably more conservative and synthetic) and is distinguished by a wide assortment of irregular declensions. Icelandic vocabulary is also deeply conservative, with the country's language regulator maintaining an active policy of coining terms based on older Icelandic words rather than directly taking in loanwords from other languages. Since the written language has not changed much, Icelandic speakers can read classic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish Language
Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's first language until the 19th century, when English gradually became dominant, particularly in the last decades of the century. Irish is still spoken as a first language in a small number of areas of certain counties such as Cork, Donegal, Galway, and Kerry, as well as smaller areas of counties Mayo, Meath, and Waterford. It is also spoken by a larger group of habitual but non-traditional speakers, mostly in urban areas where the majority are second-language speakers. Daily users in Ireland outside the education system number around 73,000 (1.5%), and the total number of persons (aged 3 and over) who claimed they could speak Irish in April 2016 was 1,761,420, representing 39.8% of respondents. For most of recorded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weak Noun
Weak nouns are nouns that follow a weak inflection paradigm, in contrast with strong nouns. They are present in several Germanic languages. English Modern English has only two vestiges of the weak noun inflection in common use: ''ox'', whose plural is ''oxen'', and ''child'', whose plural is ''children'', the latter being a double plural. Additionally, the words ''aurochs'' and ''brother'' have the optional plural forms ''aurochsen'' and ''brethren'', the latter also being a double plural. The word ''men'' is not an example of the weak inflection, since it was produced by i-mutation of ''man''. Old English had many more weak nouns, such as ''ēage'' "eye" (plural ''ēagan'') and ''draca'' "dragon" (plural '), but these have all either disappeared or become strong nouns. German In German, weak nouns are masculine (?)nouns that all have the same inflection(?) except in the nominative singular and sometimes the genitive singular. German has many more weak nouns than English; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nominative Case
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of English) the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in dictionaries. Etymology The English word ''nominative'' comes from Latin ''cāsus nominātīvus'' "case for naming", which was translated from Ancient Greek ὀνομαστικὴ πτῶσις, ''onomastikḗ ptôsis'' "inflection for naming", from ''onomázō'' "call by name", from ''ónoma'' "name". Dionysius Thrax in his The Art of Grammar refers to it as ''orthḗ'' or ''eutheîa'' "straight", in contrast to the oblique or "bent" cases. Characteristics The reference form (more technically, the ''least marked'') of ce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genitive Case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also have adverbial uses (see adverbial genitive). Genitive construction includes the genitive case, but is a broader category. Placing a modifying noun in the genitive case is one way of indicating that it is related to a head noun, in a genitive construction. However, there are other ways to indicate a genitive construction. For example, many Afroasiatic languages place the head noun (rather than the modifying noun) in the construct state. Possessive grammatical constructions, including the possessive case, may be regarded as a subset of genitive construction. For example, the genitive constru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weak Noun
Weak nouns are nouns that follow a weak inflection paradigm, in contrast with strong nouns. They are present in several Germanic languages. English Modern English has only two vestiges of the weak noun inflection in common use: ''ox'', whose plural is ''oxen'', and ''child'', whose plural is ''children'', the latter being a double plural. Additionally, the words ''aurochs'' and ''brother'' have the optional plural forms ''aurochsen'' and ''brethren'', the latter also being a double plural. The word ''men'' is not an example of the weak inflection, since it was produced by i-mutation of ''man''. Old English had many more weak nouns, such as ''ēage'' "eye" (plural ''ēagan'') and ''draca'' "dragon" (plural '), but these have all either disappeared or become strong nouns. German In German, weak nouns are masculine (?)nouns that all have the same inflection(?) except in the nominative singular and sometimes the genitive singular. German has many more weak nouns than English; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
