Gujarati grammar is very much like that of its Indo-Aryan cousin languages such as Punjabi , Nepali , Hindi , Bengali , and Marathi . This section overviews the grammar of standard Gujarati. It is written in a Romanization , sometimes alongside with Gujarati Script .
=Overview=
Gujarati is a head-final, or left- Branching language. Adjective s precede Noun s, Direct Object s come before Verb s, and there are Postposition s. The Word Order of Gujarati is SOV , and there are three Genders and two Numbers . There are no Definite or Indefinite Article s. A verb is expressed with its Verbal Root followed by Suffix es marking Aspect and Agreement in what is called a main form, with a possible proceeding Auxiliary form derived from ''to be'', marking Tense and Mood , and also showing agreement. Causative s (up to double) and passives have morphological basis'.
=Morphology=
Gujarati has three Genders and two Numbers . It has three Case s of Nominative , Oblique / Vocative , and to a certain extent, Locative . Word s display this information in a fusional Vowel Termination , while '''unmarked''' words don't. These are the paradigms for this major termination —
So, in the nominative, nouns terminating in '' O , Uṃ ,'' and '' ī '' are singularly masculine, neuter, and feminine respectively, and to make the first two plural the terminations are changed to '' ā '' and '' āṃ '' while feminine ''ī'' remains the same (no number differentiation).
However, ''not all'' nouns that terminate in these vowels fit into this scheme. ''bhāī'' "brother" is of course masculine despite the ''ī'', and in the substantive adjective ''ādmī'' " Man ", ''ī'' is an adjectival rather than feminine marker (lit. "of Adam "Snell, R. with Weightman, S. (1989) ''Teach Yourself Hindi''. McGraw-Hill. Reprint 2003. p. 24.). Thus of nominative singulars it should be stated —
- ''o'' – terminating nouns are masculine.
- ''uṃ'' – terminating nouns are neuter.
- ---Except ''ghauṃ'' "wheat (m)".
- ''ī'' – terminating nouns are feminine.
- ---Some ''male'' relations end in ''āī'': ''bhāī'' " Brother ", ''jamāī'' " Daughter 's Husband ", ''vevāī'' "child's Father-in-law ".
- ---''ī'' sometimes denotes a vocation or attribute, most often in indicating (male) persons: ''ādmī'' "man", ''shāstrī'' "scholar" (lit. " Scripture -ist"), ''hāthī'' " Elephant (m)" (lit. " Hand -y", "hand-ster").
- ---Some terminating ''ī''s derive from neuter Sanskrit ''-iyam'', ''-ījam'', etc.: ''pāṇī'' "water (n)", ''marī'' " Pepper (n)", ''bī'' " Seed (n)".
In the end, Unmarked nouns probably outnumber marked ones, though many marked nouns are highly frequent. Marked or not, the basis' of the gender of nouns are these —
# Biological: animates. Thus a ''chokrī'' "girl" is feminine, a ''baḷad'' "bull" is masculine, etc.
# Perceived: animates. Some animals have the propensity to be addressed and cast (in GN marking) as being of one gender over the others, across the board, regardless of the biological gender of the specific organism being referred to. Thus spiders are masculine: ''karoḷiyo'', cats feminine: ''bilāḍī'', and rabbits neuter: ''sasluṃ''. These three can be cast into other genders if such specificity is desired, but as explained that would be deviation from the default rather than a scenario of three equally valid choices.
# Size. An object can come in differently gender-marked versions, based on size. Masculine is big, getting smaller down through neuter and then feminine; neuter can sometimes be Pejorative . Hence, ''camco'' "big spoon" and ''camcī'' "small spoon", and ''vāḍko'' "big bowl" and ''vāḍkī'' "small bowl". The same can apply to animates (animals) that fall under the second rule just above. One would think ''saslo'' to be "male rabbit", but it's moreso "big rabbit".
# For the rest there is no logic to gender, which must simply be memorized by the learner. ''irādo'' "intention (m)", ''māthuṃ'' "head (n)", and ''mahenat'' "effort (f)" are neither animates possessing biological gender nor a part of a set of differently-sized variants; their gender is essentially inexplicable.
After this first suffix, which marks gender, number, and case (hereby called GNC), and whose distribution creates a dichotomy of "marked" and "non-marked" and words, there exists a proceeding second suffix applicable to all , which marks number (hereby called N).
For marked masculines and neuters in the nominative this suffix is redundant and unnecessary, because ''ā'' and ''āṃ'' already express plural. For Unmarked and Feminine marked nouns, however, ''o'' is needed to mark plural. It also becomes needed in the masculine oblique/vocative, since the GNC has become uniformly ā.
And yet despite the declensional system, ''o'' often gets tacked on to nominative marked Masculine and Neuter plurals anyway. This redundancy is called the ''double plural''. The origin of this suffix is murky, but it is certainly morphological rather than lexical. It is new ( 18th Century ) and it is not attested in Old Gujarati, Middle Gujarati, and Old Western Rajasthani Literature . It may simply be the case that it spread from an unrepresented Dialect .
Thus combining both GNC and N marker-suffixes, the following table outlines all grammatical Gujarati noun terminations.
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