Home > Parts of Speech > Nouns
English nouns are very simple. Not much is done to alter a noun no matter what it functions as. For example, the word "cat" in English will be "cat" if it's the subject, as in "The cat meowed" or if it's the object, as in, "My brother kicked the cat". The word itself, "cat", has not changed. This is because the word order in English is so structured that we know that when "cat" comes before the verb, the cat is the one DOING the verb and if it comes after the verb, we know someone else is doing something TO the cat.
In Sinhala, the word order is not structured the same way. In fact, Sinhala's word order is very flexible. The subject could come at the beginning of the sentence (as it does in English) or it could come at the end. Because the units of a sentence can be moved around, Sinhala needs a different system to convey WHO is doing WHAT. The way they express this is by adding a morpheme to the end of the noun. This small segment tells us if "cat" is the subject or the object. This is a Noun Case system.
The only time "cat" will ever be changed in English is when we want to express that there is more than one cat. Plural. Cat become cats in English. An -s is added to the word. This is all we are doing to the nouns in Sinhala. We are adding a sound to the end of the word to express important information about the noun (in this case, the number).
The term used to describe changes made to nouns is "declension". Just as verbs are "conjugated", nouns are "declined". The only way nouns are declined in English is through plural formation (add -s or -es, normally). However Sinhala declines nouns into different "cases", as I explained above, in addition to their plural formation.
Click the links below to learn about how to mark nouns in Sinhala.
Declensions:
In Sinhala, the word order is not structured the same way. In fact, Sinhala's word order is very flexible. The subject could come at the beginning of the sentence (as it does in English) or it could come at the end. Because the units of a sentence can be moved around, Sinhala needs a different system to convey WHO is doing WHAT. The way they express this is by adding a morpheme to the end of the noun. This small segment tells us if "cat" is the subject or the object. This is a Noun Case system.
The only time "cat" will ever be changed in English is when we want to express that there is more than one cat. Plural. Cat become cats in English. An -s is added to the word. This is all we are doing to the nouns in Sinhala. We are adding a sound to the end of the word to express important information about the noun (in this case, the number).
The term used to describe changes made to nouns is "declension". Just as verbs are "conjugated", nouns are "declined". The only way nouns are declined in English is through plural formation (add -s or -es, normally). However Sinhala declines nouns into different "cases", as I explained above, in addition to their plural formation.
Click the links below to learn about how to mark nouns in Sinhala.
Declensions:
Definitiveness
