1. Nouns
  2. Declensions
    1. Third Declension i-stems
      1. Masculine and Feminine i-stems
      2. Neuter i-stems
    2. Case usages - Nominative and Genitive

Nouns

Latin nouns have three characteristics: grammatical gender, number, and case.

Grammatical gender is not related to biological gender (though at times they can align), but it is a classification system that allows us to determine what form the modifying adjective should take (more on this below). Nouns can be one of three of genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. A noun’s gender cannot be changed.

Number tells us whether the noun in question is singular or plural. Consequently, it also plays a role in determining the form the modifying adjective may take (more on this below). When nouns function as the subject of the sentence, number also helps us to determine the proper verb form to use (subject-verb agreement). This works exactly like English. For example, you wouldn’t say “the boys walks to school”; rather, the plural subject “boys” must have a plural verb to agree with it: “the boys walk to school.”

Case indicates the function of a noun in the sentence. Because Latin is an inflected language, it does not rely on word order to indicate how a word functions in a sentence. Rather, the endings of the noun will change to reflect what it is doing in the sentence - whether it is a subject or direct object or the object of preposition etc. Again, it will also provide information about the form that the modifying adjective must take (more on this below). Nouns can be one of six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, or vocative.

To summarize, nouns have:

  • Grammatical Gender
    • Feminine
    • Masculine
    • Neuter
  • Number
    • Singular
    • Plural
  • Case
    • Nominative
    • Genitive
    • Dative
    • Accusative
    • Ablative
    • Vocative

How can we determine what characteristics that a noun “in the wild” has? We need to consult what we call the dictionary entry (that is, how the noun will appear in a dictionary). Below we have the dictionary entry for mater:

mater, matris, f. - mother

Working from left to right:

mater indicates what the nominative singular form of the word is.

matris indicates the genitive singular form of the word. This form tells us two important pieces of information. First, it provides the stem (matr-) that is used to create all cases and numbers of the noun in question except for the nominative singular. Second, the ending, in this example -is, tells us the pattern (often referred to as a declension) that the noun will follow in creating different cases and numbers (more below).

Next, we have grammatical gender, signified here by the “f”, that tells us that mater is feminine. As mentioned above, this is an immutable characteristic.

The last part of the dictionary entry is simply the definition.

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Declensions

As I alluded to above, Latin is an inflected language and relies on word endings to reveal how a word functions within the sentence. The way that Latin nouns or adjectives change their endings to reflect their function in a sentence is what we call a declension. There are three major declensions (as well as two minor ones) that we will become familiar with.

The declension to which a noun belongs can be easily determined by consulting the genitive singular form in the dictionary entry:

  • If the genitive singular entry ends in -ae, then the noun belongs to what we call the first declension (e.g., fīlia, fīliae, f. - daughter). The paradigm chart for first declension nouns can be found here.

  • If the genitive singular entry ends in -ī, then the noun belongs to what we call the second declension (e.g., fīlius, fīliī, m. - son). NOTE: The nominative singular forms of second declension masculine nouns can end either in -us (e.g., fīlius) or -r (e.g., puer, ager), while the nominative singular forms of second declension neuter nouns usually end in -um. Nevertheless, the genitive singulars of all of these nouns ends in -ī, so they all belong to the second declension! Here are the paradigm charts for second declension masculine nouns and second declension neuter nouns.

  • If the genitive singular entry ends in -is, then the noun belongs to what we call the third declension (e.g pater, patris, m. - father). Here are the paradigm charts for third declension masculine/feminine nouns and third declension neuter nouns.

Third Declension i-stems

There is a special subset of third declension nouns known as i-stems. These nouns include an -i- in certain case/number endings:

  • masculine, feminine, and neuter i-stems have the ending -ium in the genitive plural, rather than the expected -um.
  • neuter i-stems alone also use -ī as the ablative singular ending (rather than the expected -e) and -ia as the nominative and accusative plural ending (rather than the expected -a).

We can identify an i-stem based on the nominative and genitive forms in the noun’s dictionary entry according to the following rules:

Masculine and Feminine i-stems

  1. parisyllabic: the nominative ends in -is or -ēs, and the nominative and the genitive have the same number of syllables (pari- = “equal”). Some examples of parisyllabic i-stems include:
    • hostis, hostis, m. - enemy (gen. pl. = hostium)
    • nāvis, nāvis, f. - ship (gen. pl. = nāvium)
  2. monosyllabic and double consonant: the nominative ends in -s or -x, and the noun stem ends in two consonants. Often, the nominative is a single syllable. Some examples include:
    • ars, artis, f. - art, skill (gen. pl. = artium)
    • nox, noctis, f. - night (gen. pl. = noctium)
    • urbs, urbis, f. - city (gen. pl. = urbium)

Note that the only difference in declension between these masculine and feminine i-stems versus regular masculine and feminine third declension nouns is the extra -i- in the genitive plural ending. Otherwise, declension is completely regular. Here are the paradigm charts for masculine and feminine i-stems.

Neuter i-stems

  1. -al, -ar, -e: the nominative ends in -al, -ar, or -e. Examples include:
    • animal, animālis, n. - animal (abl. sg. = animālī; nom. and acc. pl. = animālia; gen. pl. = animālium)
    • mare, maris, n. - sea (abl. sg. = marī; nom. and acc. pl. = maria; gen. pl. = marium)

Note that only neuter i-stems use an -i- in the abl. sg. and nom. and acc. pl. forms (and they use it in the gen. pl., a trait shared with masculine and feminine i-stems). Masculine and feminine i-stems use the -i- only in the gen. pl.

Here are the paradigm charts for neuter i-stems.

Case usages - Nominative and Genitive

For the current module, we will focus only on two of the six cases: the nominative and the genitive. The nominative case is used to signal that a noun is the subject of a sentence or is equivalent to the subject of the sentence. For an example of the latter, we can think of the Latin sentence: mater est femina (“the mother is a woman”). Both mater and fēmina are in the nominative. Mater is the subject of the verb est and so is in the nominative case. Fēmina is also in the nominative case because it is equivalent with the subject mater in this sentence. This usage, which occurs with a linking verb (e.g. “is” in English, “est” in Latin), is called the predicate nominative.

Nouns in the genitive case are used to modify another noun and will usually appear next to that noun. Like adjectives, they provide further information about that noun. The genitive is almost always translated with “of” plus the word in the genitive. Examples of the usage of the genitive include:

fīlius patris (the son of the father)
nullus familiae (none of the family)

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