| 4. NOUNS |
| 4.1. Nominal Stems |
|
Nominal stems are those which take or capable of taking case suffixes or number suffixes.
|
|
Pronouns form a separate class of nouns as they do not occur with pronominal suffixes as is the case with nouns. Numerals are differentiated from the nouns and form a separate class becuase they function as quantifier and do nto take number suffixes. Moreover, they have different sets of forms to indicate masculine and non-maculine gender. The diffenece between the adjectives and the nouns is in taking the gender suffixes. Noun may belong either to maculine or non-masculine gender. Though adjectives do not belong to any gender, they are inflected for gender and number.
|
| 4.2.0. Classifiction of Noun Stems |
|
Noun stems are divided into two classes as those ending in vowels and those ending in consonants. With regard to nouns ending in vowels, their classification is based on long vowels only because in the phonological system of this language short vowels do not occur in the final position of words. This classification may be necessary because stems with different endings might be inflected differently.
|
| 4.2.1. Vowel Ending Stems |
|
Most of the nouns ending in vowels are disyllabic in nature. Trisyliabic nouns are few when compared to disyllabic ones.
|
| i: endings: |
|
a:ki: |
‘leaf’ |
|
ilwi: |
‘lip’ |
|
usan i: |
‘a clan name’ |
|
ka: i: |
‘arrow’ |
|
kurki: |
‘thigh’ |
|
pe:ki: |
‘girl’ |
|
koi: |
‘graveyard’ |
|
gui: |
‘temple’ |
|
i:pi: |
‘mud wall’ |
|
paddi: |
‘pig’ |
|
