Nouns Human being class class
(abbreviated NH class of nouns) and Nouns animate non-human being
class (abbreviated NanH being class). Given below is a chart showing
the sub-grouping of the nouns in this language.
A formal definition of each
of the sub-groups of nouns follows:
Noun human being class: The
nouns that are capable of showing the presence of plural and the
dative case markers and the absence of the locative case marker and
selects the third person pronoun tay ‘he/she’ for substituting a
noun/noun phrase form a sub-group of nouns designated as nouns human
being class (abbreviated NH class).
Nouns animate non-human being
class: The nouns that are capable of showing the presence of plural
and the locative case markers and the absence of the dative case
marker and selects the third person pronouns itu/heytu ‘it’ for
substituting a noun/noun phrase form a sub-group of nouns designated
as nouns animate non-human being class abbreviated NanH class.
Nouns inanimate being class:
The nouns that are capable of showing the locative case marker but are
incapable of taking the number and the dative case markers and
substitute the third person pronoun itu/heytu ‘it’ for a noun/noun
phrase form a sub-group of noun designated as nouns inanimate being
class (abbreviated Nina class).
In all the sub-groups while
the nominative and the genitive case relations are left unmarked, the
instrumental case relation is marked by a post position. The
distinctive features found with each of the sub-groups along with
illustrative examples are given below in a tabular form.
It was mentioned earlier that
a few nouns within the NH and NanH being class show overt gender
markers. Even then, gender as a grammatical category is ignored in
this work partly because of its functional yield of opposition being
extremely low and partly because, most of the speakers consider these
nouns as single entities rather than paired nouns. Barring these few
paired nouns, the nouns in this language do not show any sub-morphemic
feature, i.e., they have the same shape before all the suffixes and
post positions.
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