Grammar 4 |
a) The grammatical genderIn Surayt, there are two grammatical genders: masculine (abbreviated: m) and feminine (abbreviated: f). Moreover, both nouns and adjectives can appear in either singular (abbreviated: sg.) or plural (abbreviated: pl.). Usually, singular feminine words end in either -to ـܬܐ or -ṯo ـܬ̣ܐ:
Exceptions to this rule are feminine nouns ending in -o / ـܐ and masculine nouns ending in -to / ـܬܐ: Feminine: -o / ـܐ
Feminine words ending in -o / ـܐ denote female beings, body parts that occur in pairs naturally, or are loan words. Masculine: -to / ـܬܐ
The ending /t ܬ/ of the masculine words above is part of the word root and thus only coincidentally identical with the feminine ending. The gender of all nouns is clearly marked by the article.
b) The Copula In Surayt, the copular verb (e.g., the English auxiliary verb ‘to be’) is omitted. Instead, a clipped form of the personal pronoun is used, which comes after the respective word or phrase.
Examples:
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