View example sentences, synonyms and word forms for Declension.

Declension

Declension | Declensions

Declension meaning

A falling off, decay or descent. | The act of declining a word; the act of listing the inflections of a noun, pronoun or adjective in order. | The product of that act; a list of declined forms.

Example sentences (20)

For simple declension paradigms, visit the Wiktionary appendices: first declension, second declension, third declension, fourth declension, fifth declension.

Basic declension theory Core examples The following hypothetical examples illustrate how languages with declension work.

Declension paradigms main Declension is the process or result of altering nouns to the correct grammatical cases.

First and second declension adjectives' adverbs First and second declension adjectives' adverbs are formed by adding –ē onto their bases.

First and second declension –r adjectives Some first and second declension adjectives' masculine form end in –er.

For regular first and second declension and third declension adjectives with one or two endings, the comparative is formed by adding –ior for the masculine and feminine, and –ius for the neuter to the base.

Languages with rich nominal inflection (use grammatical cases for many purposes) typically have a number of identifiable declension classes, or groups of nouns with a similar pattern of case inflection or declension.

Latin main An example of a Latin noun declension is given below, using the singular forms of the word homo (man), which belongs to Latin's third declension.

Originally the n-stem declension was not a single declension but a set of separate declensions (e.

The predominant letter in the ending forms of this declension is u, but the declension is otherwise very similar to the third.

Third declension adjectives' adverbs Typically, third declension adjectives' adverbs are formed by adding –iter onto their bases.

This theoretical system of declension is relatively simple and is more or less how declension works in languages such as Hungarian, Russian, Bengali, Greek, Basque, Japanese or Sanskrit.

But the civil society must save itself from this moral declension.

According to Gow, Housman could never remember his students' names, maintaining that "had he burdened his memory by the distinction between Miss Jones and Miss Robinson, he might have forgotten that between the second and fourth declension".

A declension is also a group of nouns that follow a particular pattern of inflection.

A definite article was realised as a suffix, that retained an independent declension e.g. troll (a troll) – trollit (the troll), hǫll ( a hall) – hǫllin (the hall), armr (an arm) – armrinn (the arm).

Adverbs' superlative forms are made in the same way in which first and second declension adjectives' adverbs are made.

An 8th century inscription in Tywyn shows the language already dropping inflections in the declension of nouns.

An example is eṅkwe (Toch B), oṅk (Toch A) "man", which belongs to the same declension as above, but has oblique singular eṅkweṃ (Toch B), oṅkaṃ (Toch A), and corresponding oblique stems eṅkweṃ- (Toch B), oṅkn- (Toch A) for the secondary cases.

As with second declension –r nouns, some adjectives retain the e throughout inflection, and some omit it.