Latvian declension
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Latvian declension describes the declension of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals in the Latvian language. There is a system of seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative) in Latvian.

Nouns

Latvian has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine.

Latvian nouns can be classified as either declinable or indeclinable. Most Latvian nouns are declinable, and regular nouns belong to one of six declension classes (three for masculine nouns, and three for feminine nouns).

Latvian nouns have seven grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. The instrumental case is always identical to the accusative in the singular, and to the dative in the plural. It is only used as a free-standing case (i.e., in the absence of a preposition) in highly restricted contexts in modern Latvian. (See below for a true prepositional case, the ablative.)

Masculine declensions

The three masculine declensions have the following identifying characteristics:

• 1st decelension: nom. sing. in -s or -š, thematic vowel -a- (e.g. vīrs "man, husband")
• 2nd declension: nom. sing. in -is (or -ns/-ss, see below), thematic vowel -i- (e.g. skapis "shelf")
• 3rd declension: nom. sing. in -us, thematic vowel -u- (e.g. tirgus "market, bazaar")

The full paradigms of endings for the three declensions is given in the following table:

The 2nd declension exhibits palatalization of the final stem consonant in the genitive singular and throughout the plural (p → pj in the example above, but see below for full details). Exceptions to this include compound nouns and some proper names ending in -is (e.g. Atis, gen. sing. Ata).

A small subclass of 2nd declension nouns have nominative and genitive singular ending in -ens (or -ess): e.g. akmens "stone", asmens "blade", rudens "autumn", zibens "lightning", ūdens "water", mēness "moon". The 2nd declension noun suns "dog" has the regular genitive singular suṇa.

Feminine declensions

The three feminine declensions can be characterized as follows:

• 4th decelension: nom. sing. in -a, thematic vowel -a- (e.g. sieva "woman, wife")
• 5th declension: nom. sing. in -e, thematic vowel -e- (e.g. upe "river")
• 6th declension: nom. sing. in -s, thematic vowel -i- (e.g. nakts "night")

The full paradigms of endings for the three declensions is given in the following

The final stem consonant is palatalized in the genitive plural of 5th and 6th declension nouns (in the examples above, p → pj and t → š, but see the next section for full details). Exceptions to this include loanwords such as epizode (gen. pl. epizodu) in the 5th declension and a handful of words in the 6th declension: acs "eye", ausu "ear", balss "voice", zoss "goose".

The 4th and 5th declensions include a number of masculine nouns (e.g. puika "boy", or proper names such as Dilba, Zvaigzne), or common gender nouns that are either masculine or feminine depending on their use in context (e.g. paziṇa "acquaintance", bende "executioner") . In these cases, the masculine nouns take the same endings as given in the table above, except in the dative singular:

• 4th decl.: -am (e.g. dat. sing. puikam "boy")
• 5th decl.: -em (e.g. dat. sing. bendem "male executioner", cf. bendei "female executioner")

The 6th declension noun ḷaudis "people" is masculine. It has no singular forms, only regular plural forms.

Palatalization

Some of the case endings given in the declension tables above begin with an underlying /j/, which has the effect of palatalizing the preceding stem consonant. This is true of the 2nd declension genitive singular (ending -ja), all forms of the 2nd declension plural, and the genitive plural of the 5th and 6th declensions (ending -ju).

Palatalized labial consonants are simply indicated by an orthographic j:

Other consonants and clusters of consonants undergo more complex changes:

The palatalization of r is no longer indicated in modern Latvian orthography. For example, the gen. plur. of cepure "hat" is cepuru (but may be pronounced cepuŗu).

Indeclinable nouns

Some nouns do not belong to any of the declension classes presented above, and show no case or number inflection. For the most part, these indeclinable nouns are unassimilated loanwords or foreign names that end in a vowel. Some example are: taksi "taxi", ateljē "studio", Deli "Delhi".

Archaic forms

Ablative case

The following table illustrates case syncretism in Latvian ablative and instrumental forms. In the singular, the ablative is identical to the genitive, and the instrumental is identical to the accusative. In the plural, both ablative and instrumental are identical to the dative.

The ablative is generally not presented as a separate grammatical case in traditional Latvian grammars, because it appears exclusively with prepositions. One can say instead that prepositions requiring the genitive in the singular require the dative in the plural. The instrumental case, on the other hand, cannot be eliminated so easily, because it can be used in some contexts without any preposition:^[1]

• vīrs sarkanu bārdu "a man with a red beard" (singular: instrumental = accusative)
• meitene zilām acīm "a girl with blue eyes" (plural: instrumental = dative)

Declensions

It is generally believed that Latvian has 6 declensions, but a seventh declension appears to have existed.^{citation needed} An example of inflection of words "viltus" (deceit) and "dzirnus" (mill - dialectal^{citation needed}):

It is worth noting however that in modern Latvian noun viltus has a masculine grammatical gender and is inflected according to 3rd declension.^[2]

Dual number

Old Latvian had also a Dual number. Nowadays perhaps in some dialects the dual might be used only in some words representing body parts,^{citation needed} e.g. divi roki, kāji, auši, akši, nāši 'two hands, legs, ears, eyes, nostrils', in such phrases like: skatīties ar abi akši 'to look with both eyes', klausīties ar abi auši 'to listen with both ears', ņemt ar abi roki 'to take with both hands', lekt ar abi kāji 'to jump with both legs'.^{citation needed}

The old Dual endings of all cases:

Locative case forms

The locative case allegedly once had three forms:^{citation needed} inessive (the regular and most common form), illative (for example in old Latvian texts: iekš(k)an tan pirman vietan, in modern Latvian it has been replaced by the inessive, but vestiges of what supposedly once was an illative final -an changed to an -ā^{citation needed} remain in some adverbs, e.g. āran > ārā 'outdoors, outside', priekšan > priekš 'for'), allative (only used in a few idiomatic expressions like: augšup, lejup, mājup, kalnup, šurp, turp). The later two are adverb-forming cases.^{citation needed}

Adjectives

Adjectives in Latvian agree in case, number, and gender with the noun they modify. In addition, they express the category of definiteness. Latvian lacks definite and indefinite articles, but the form of the adjective chosen can determine the correct interpretation of the noun phrase. For example, consider the following examples:

Viņa nopirka vecu māju]. "She bought [an old house]."

Viņa nopirka veco māju]. "She bought [the old house]."

In both sentences, the adjective is feminine singular accusative, to agree with the noun māju "house". But the first sentence contains the indefinite form of the adjective, while the second one contains the definite form.

Indefinite declension

Masculine indefinite adjectives are declined like nouns of the first declension, and feminine indefinite adjectives are declined like nouns of the fourth declension.

Definite declension

In the history of Latvian, definite noun phrases were constructed with forms of an old pronoun *jis; traces of this form can still be seen in parts of the definite adjectival paradigm.^[3] Note that only definite adjectives are used in the vocative case. The nominative form can always be used as a vocative. If, however, the modified noun appears as a vocative form distinct from its nominative form (this can only happen with singular nouns, as can be seen from the declension tables above), then the vocative form of the adjective can optionally be identical to its accusative form in -o.^[4]

Examples

The declension of the adjective zils/zila "blue" is given below.

Adjectives containing the suffix -ēj- have reduced case endings in the dative and locative. For example, vidējs, -a "central" (indefinite) has the following definite paradigm:

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

The third person personal pronouns in Latvian have a regular nominal declension, and they have distinct masculine and feminine forms. The first and second person pronouns, and the reflexive pronoun, show no gender distinction, and have irregular declensions.

^*After a preposition governing the dative (e.g. līdz "to, until"), the dative forms manīm, tevīm, and sevīm are possible. These forms may replace genitive and accusative pronouns with other prepositions, too.^[5]

Other pronouns

The following tables show the declension of the demonstratives tas "that" and šis "this".

The interrogative/relative pronoun kas "who, what" has the same declension, but it has only singular forms (and no locative form, with the adverb kur "where" used instead). The same applies to forms derived from kas: nekas "nothing", kaut kas "something", etc.

The intensive pronoun pats/pati (cf. "I myself", "they themselves") is irregular:

Other pronouns and determiners exhibit regular (indefinite) adjectival declension:

• the demonstrative forms tāds/tāda "such (as that)" and šāds/šāda "such (as this)"
• the 1st and 2nd person singular possessive forms mans/mana "my", tavs/tava "your (fam.)" (and the reflexive savs/sava)
• the interrogatives kurš/kura "which", kāds/kāda "what (kind)", and indefinite pronouns derived from them, e.g. nekāds "no", kaut kāds, nezin kāds "some kind of"
• other indefinite pronouns such as dažs/daža "some, certain", cits/cita "other", viss/visa "all", (ik)katrs/(ik)katra "every", ikviens/ikviena "each"

Numerals

In Latvian there are two types of numerals: cardinals and ordinals.

The numbers from 1 to 9 are declinable. The number 1 (viens/viena) combines with a singular noun, 2 (divi/divas) through 9 (deviņi/deviņas) with plural nouns. With the exception of trīs "3", these numbers take the same endings as indefinite adjectives.

The following cardinal numbers are indeclinable:

• the numerals 11–19: vienpadsmit, divpadsmit, trīspadsmit, četrpadsmit, piecpadsmit, sešpadsmit, septiņpadsmit, astoņpadsmit, deviņpadsmit
• desmit (10) and its compounds: divdesmit, trīsdesmit, četrdesmit, piecdesmit, sešdesmit, septiņdesmit, astoņdesmit, deviņdesmit
• simt (100) and its compounds: simt, divsimt, trīssimt, četrsimt, piecsimt, sešsimt, septiņsimt, astoņsimt, deviņsimt
• tūkstoš (1000) and its compounds: tūkstoš, divtūkstoš, trīstūkstoš, četrtūkstoš, piectūkstoš, seštūkstoš, septiņtūkstoš, astoņtūkstoš, deviņtūkstoš, etc.

Ordinal numbers ("first", "second", etc.) are declined like definite adjectives. In compound numbers, only the final element is ordinal, e.g. trīsdesmit otrajā minūtē "in the 32nd minute".

See also

• Latvian conjugation
• Latvian prepositions

Notes

References

• Andronov, A. V. (2001). "A survey of the case paradigm in Latvian". Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 54 (3): 197–208. 
• (French) Petit, Justyna and Daniel (2004). Parlons letton. Paris: L'Harmattan. ISBN 2-7475-5910-6. 

External links

• Overview of the Latvian Language (en)