| 4.5.0. Gender |
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Like other Centeral Dravidian languages, Abujhmaria has two genders: masculine and non-masculine, both in singular and plural. Masculine gender denotes persons of the male sex and the non-masculine gender denotes persons of female sex, animals, inanimate objects and abstract nouns, In this language noun stems can be classified according to the gender suffix they take:
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| (a) Nouns ending in masculine suffix. |
| (b) Nouns ending in non-masculine suffix. |
| 4.5.1. Masculine Derivative Suffixes |
| -a:l |
/-a:l  -l -o: -e:/ |
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/-a:l/ occurs in the following masculine nouns with consonant ending stems.
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gu: -a:l |
‘dwaft’ |
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pe:k-a:l |
‘boy’ |
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pe: g-a:l |
‘boy’ |
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ko:ry-a:l |
‘bachelor’ |
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ma:nk-a:l |
‘man’ |
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ja:-a:l |
‘immoral person’ |
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ka:n-a:l |
‘blind-man’ |
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ko:nd-a:l |
‘dumb person’ |
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kum-a:l |
‘potter’ |
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ra:n -a:l |
‘widower’ |
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ann-a:l |
‘elder brother’ |
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ka g-a:l |
‘poor man’ |
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ko:p-a:l |
‘milkman’ |
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meym-a:l |
‘father’ |
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/-l/ occurs in the following masculine nouns ending in a vowel. All of them are borrowed from Indo-Aryan languages.
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da:da:-l |
‘elder brother’ |
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ba:ba:-l |
‘father’ |
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ma:ma:-l |
‘mother’s brother, father-in-law’ |
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ka:ka:-l |
‘father’s younger brother’ |
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pa:ga:-l |
‘mad’ |
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gawli:-l |
‘milkman’ |
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ka:ti:-l |
‘blacksmith’ |
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In the above and in the earlier examples the final -l is optionally dropped.
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