(Grammar)Noun+Basics

= Noun Basics =

In Latin, there are four characteristics of nouns that we have to keep track of. These are **case**,
 * number**, **gender**, and **declension**.


 * Case**- This is probably one of the hardest concepts to pick up, as Latin is one of the few languages with a heavy emphasis on this characteristic. What the noun's case does is it indicates syntax, or how the noun is used in the sentence. In most languages, this is determined by word order. Here is an example of an English sentence and its breakdown:

Mark throws the ball to Pete. "Mark" is the subject. He is the doer of the action, and his name is the first word in the sentence. "Throws" is the verb. It is the action Mark does and immediately follows the subject. "Ball" is the direct object. It is the thing Mark throws and follows the verb. "Pete" is the object of the preposition. It follows the word "to," a preposition.

If we change the order of the sentence, we change the function of the nouns. For example, switch where we put "Mark" and "Pete," and now Pete is the doer and Mark is the object of "to." Switch where we put "ball" and "Pete," and now Pete is being thrown toward the ball. Now imagine that one in your head...

Also, the word order makes the sentence make sense. If we wrote "Mark the ball to Pete throws," we could figure out what it means, but I dare you to use such a sentence in your next English essay.

Latin, however, indicates the case of a noun through a series of endings. Here is the same sentence in Latin.

Marcus pilam ad Petrum iacit.

"Marcus," or Mark, is the subject, as indicated by the ending on it. This ending belongs to the **nominative** case. "Pilam," or ball, is the direct object, as indicated by the ending on it. This ending belongs to the **accusative** case. "Petrum," or Pete, is the object of the preposition "ad," or to. "Ad" is its own word and has no endings, but "Petrum" is also in the accusative case. "Iacit," is the verb. We'll deal with this elsewhere (link forthcoming).

Since the ending dictates the function of the noun, we can rearrange the sentence in any order we wish, and the meaning is still the same. An example:

Pilam Marcus ad Petrum iacit.

Notice I flipped the order of "pilam" and "Marcus." However, since I didn't change the endings, they still have the same function in the sentence. This allows a Latin writer to do some interesting things with word order, even use it as a tool for adding power to his or her message. The orator Cicero is a master of such usage, as is the poet Vergil. An example from Cicero:

...hic munitissimus habendi senatus locus... (//In Catilinam I.1//)

"Hic munitissimus locus" = this most fortified place, while "habendi senatus" = of holding the Senate. Notice how the words "most fortified place" actually "hold" the words "of holding the Senate." Neat, huh? Only in Latin (and Greek, but that's another story).

To be fair, English and the Romance Languages that come from Latin (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian) have remnants of a case system. The 's on the ends of nouns to indicate possession, or the varying pronoun forms in Spanish and other languages, recall the days when all such words had an ending to show their job in a sentence.

Finally, don't be scared that I haven't explained exactly what nominative and accusative are above, or that I used the accusative twice in the same sentence for different things. All will be explained later. For now, it is important only to know that case exists and why.


 * Number**- this one's a little less complicated. Just like in English, we can use or not use an ending on a noun to show that we have one or more than one of it. So, by stacking one "book" on top of another "book", we now have "books." Latin does the same thing, but since we have the added detail of case, nouns are made singular and plural by a variety of different endings, depending on how the noun is used in the sentence and how many of each noun there are. We will learn all the endings in other entries.


 * Gender**- this is a quality that is lacking from English but is prevalent in most other languages around the world. For example, if we had to apply a gender to "girl" or "boy," we would obviously say "female" and "male." But what about "tree" or "car" or "door"? Not so obvious, is it. But in Latin, those words, along with all the other nouns out there, would have a gender. The main point of gender in Latin, and in its offshoot languages, is to help nouns agree with adjectives, a concept we will deal with in another entry. It's also an organizing tool. The three genders are:


 * Feminine (which applies to obvious words like woman or girl or sister, but also is seen attached to nouns connected to the earth, a reflection of the ancient belief of the inherent femininity of the earth itself).
 * Masculine (which applies to obvious words like man or boy or brother, but also is seen attached to words describing occupations or higher parts of the earth, like hill and mountain).
 * Neuter (this applies nearly exclusively to objects, as referring to a person via a neuter noun is a grave insult. However, a rare few words, just for this purpose, exist).

Gender is not assigned at random, but it is not important for right now to go into the whys and wherefores of how "door" became a feminine noun. When looking at a noun in a dictionary, you will see listed before the definition either an "m," "f," or "n." Remember that, along with some of the common sense and cultural concepts above, and you'll do fine with this detail.


 * Declension**- Declension, or declining, has two meanings. As a verb, declining refers to the changing of endings on a noun. Jump from singular to plural, and you've declined. Jump from nominative to accusative, and you've declined. As a noun, declension refers to a collection of endings and the nouns that use them. Latin has five of these groups, with a very complex naming system: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. See, really difficult names to remember. In most cases, a single vowel sound creates a connection between the various endings in a declension. For example, most endings in the 1st declension start with the letter "a," while most endings in the 4th declension start with "u," (which is why I usually call it the "u" declension), and all endings in 5th declension start with "e" (so you can probably guess my other name for this group. If you guessed "e" declension, give yourself a cookie).

Most Latin programs start with a focus on 1st and 2nd declensions, and sometimes 3rd. The 4th and 5th are covered either at the end of year one or the beginning of year two, mostly because the nouns of the 4th and 5th declensions aren't very common (with some rare notable exceptions) and are of a smaller number than 1st, 2nd, and 3rd declension nouns. Again, there are reasons why nouns get grouped the way they do and how the endings in each group develop, but that's a bigger topic than I want to get into here.

One important point: with the exception of a few rebels like //domus//, which can sometimes act like 2nd or 4th declension, once a noun gets into a group, it stays there for life. So, once you know what group a noun belongs to, you don't have to worry about it surprising you one day as having joined forces with another declension.

So, how do you know what declension a noun belongs to? Let's look at a sample noun from above, //pila//. If you looked this up in a Latin-English dictionary, here's what you would find at the beginning:

Pila, pilae f.

"Pila" is the nominative singular form; all vocabulary entries begin with this form. "Pilae" is the **genitive** singular form. We'll talk about what this case is used for later, but in this context, the genitive singular indicates in which declension you would find the noun. In the case of //pila//, since the ending on the genitive singular is "ae," we know that this belongs to the 1st declension (once you learn the endings for all five declensions, you'll understand why this is true). Finally, notice the "f" following the genitive singular. There's that gender sign I mentioned earlier. So, we know that //pila// is feminine (the vast majority of nouns in 1st declension are; however, as you learn more vocabulary, you will find that gender does not always equal declension). That will be useful if someday we want to give the ball a size or a color or any other descriptive detail.

And there you have it, the basic details of a Latin noun. Now onto specifics.