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Old April 24, 2013, 08:19 AM
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Perikles Perikles is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Tenerife
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Caramelita View Post
Hmm.. what would be the declination of nouns in this case? the adjective declination is already clear to me (the previous post). Im really confused now

so for example : niñ- could be either niña or niño... i guess niñ- is the lexema
Yes - This is all quite straightforward, and I think the problem is your understanding of 'declination'.

Declination is the inflection of a noun to describe its grammatical function. The form of the word changes to describe whether it is the subject, object, indirect object, or governed by a preposition. Some languages inflect strongly (Latin, Greek) some weakly (German) and some hardly at all (English).

Take the word table in Latin. If you said 'the table is in the corner' the word is mensa. If you said 'I made that table', it would be mensam. If you said 'the legs of that table are blue', it would be mensae and so on. If you were talking to Brutus, and saying 'and you too, Brutus' you would say et tu Brute? because the name declines to reflect the fact you are talking directly to somebody.

German does something similar (sometimes). English nouns only decline in the genitive case denoting possession. I like John. I like John's house. The 's is short for es which is a Saxon genitive.

What you quoted about Spanish nouns has nothing to do with declension, just word formation and general rules for noun endings associated with genders.

This declension doesn't happen in Spanish nouns (but I thought it did in Hebrew ). The only change is from singular to plural, with a plural ending. So nouns decline only with number.

Was that any help?

Last edited by Perikles; April 24, 2013 at 08:23 AM.
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