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Nouns

Nouns in Foħθīrix language end almost exclusively in a vowel. A certain number of nouns, mostly loanwords, may unusually end in a consonant; in this case the typical nominal vowels, -e- in the singular and -ē- in the plural, are added at the end of noun before the normal declension endings.

Nouns are grouped into two declension classes: animate nouns or class I and inanimate nouns or class II. The first class generally includes nouns indicating animate beings, namely capable of intentional motion or action, while the second class includes inanimate objects or entities. As a rule, we can sketch out the following scheme:

• class I: human beings, animals, deities
• class II: plants, objects, ideas, feelings, senses, perceptions

A noun is not irreversibly included in one of the two classes, as nouns lack clear morphological marks for each class. For example, the word lūrex, light, shifts from a class to the other during the history of the language, as the noun pākex, love, depending on the overall cultural perception of the noun’s animateness degree.

Despite the general lack of morphological markers in the basic forms, being thus unable to distinguish the two classes, the declension patterns depend on which class a noun belongs to.

There are two morphological numbers for almost all nouns, singular and plural.