# Nominative plural = Genitive singular, for feminine nouns?



## Tjahzi

I've noticed this very interesting pattern, that appears to be found in most inflecting languages: the nominative plural and the genitive singular forms are identical. I've found this trait in the following of the Indo-European languages:

Slavic languages: 

 All East Slavic.*
 All West Slavic.*
 BCS and Slovene.* 

*I'm aware of the fact that stress/accent sometimes separate the forms, but there _are_ a lot identical pairs. Additionally, in these languages, neuter nouns also exhibit this trait.

Romance Languages: 

 Latin.* 
Romanian.**

*In Latin, some masculine nouns follow this pattern as well.
**In Romanian, the genitive and the dative are identical. Also, I discovered a few neuter and masculine nouns that also had identical Nom. pl. and Gen. sg. forms. However, those had identical forms in Nom. sg. and Gen. pl. as well.

Germanic languages: 

 Icelandic+Faroese.* 
 English.**
 German.***

*Although only the first class of feminine nouns (and a few of the third class) exhibit this pattern, it's present.
**Interestingly enough, despite lacking gender, English clearly exhibits this trait, although the forms are orthographically distinguished.
***Extremely irregularly, and not for any feminine nouns as far as I can tell, so technically, it shouldn't be on the list.


To sum, this clearly seems to have been present in Proto-IE, which leads to the interesting question of whether it could be more widespread than that. Obviously, it's extremely unlikely to appear anywhere but in inflecting languages, which means Altaic and Finno-Ugric should be excluded, but what about Semitic and Indo-Aryan languages. My knowledge of these are limited, but I would be very happy if you could fill me in on whether they exhibit this trait as well.

Also, if you disagree about or have any comments regarding my above list, feel free to point it out.


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## Maroseika

Same trait can be noticed in Lule-Saam. What's about other Finnic?

In Old-Slavonic Neutral Gen. Sing. also coincided with Nom. Plural. The same is now in Russian, but only homographically (maybe in other Slavic, too).

By the way, in Old-Slavonic (and now in Russian and maybe in other Slavic as well) Masculine Genitive of stems ending on ъ (the most part of all Masc. nouns) coincides with old Dual Masculine.
What's about *Masculine Gen. Sing. = Nom. Dual *in those languages that follow the pattern  Feminine Gen. Sing. = Nom. Plural? And is there any common explanation of these 2 facts?


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## Tjahzi

Ahh, thank you! Finnic languages should indeed not be ruled out (although I'm still very skeptical regarding Altaic ones).

Yes, indeed. They tend not to differ as much in terms of stress, compared to Russian.

The *masc. gen. sg*. vs *masc.* *nom. du.* connection is very interesting! I checked up on Slovene, being the only Slavic language to retain the dual, and found that their *masc. gen. sg*. and *nom. du.* were indeed identical! This subject certainly needs a deeper investigation...


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## Ihsiin

If in English you're referring to the plural "-s" and the genitive "-'s", I believe these are descended from Old the English nominative plural ending "-as" and genitive singular ending "-es".


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## sokol

I would put it down as chance similarity so long as no clear evidence to the contrary is available (I can't offer any, haven't ever tried to delve into this particular topic).

As counter evidence please consider the following facts from Slovene declension:

mož (sg. nom.)
moža (sg. gen.)
moža (dual nom.!!)
možje (pl. nom!!)

and also:
moža (sg. and dual acc.)

Accent here does not differ.

Some other nouns follow similar patterns, I think mainly maculine ones.

Then there's another one where accent is different:
stezà (sg. nom.)
stezè (sg. gen.)
stezé (dual nom.)
stezé (pl. nom.)

The sg. gen. form of 'stezè' does not exist in any other case or number of Slovene.

Of course, there are plenty of nouns where declension indeed is, as you suggest, identical for sg. gen. and pl. nom.; but I do not see any conclusive argument here.
And in fact the difference in accent with some nouns should not at all be discredited as 'minor' difference: differing accent often points to different roots and origins.


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## Montesacro

As far as Latin is concerned, feminine nouns of the third and fifth declension don't follow your pattern.

_*Lux*_ (3rd declension):
genitive singular _lucis_
nominative plural _luces_


_*Dies*_ (5th declension):
genitive singular _diei_
nominative plural _dies_


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## Dan2

Tjahzi said:


> English.**
> ...
> **Interestingly enough, despite lacking gender, English clearly exhibits this trait, although the forms are orthographically distinguished.


EDIT: When I saw the subject line of this thread, with its mention of "feminine", I immediately thought of the only language I have knowledge of that has extensive noun declension, Russian; and in Russian your claim is generally true for feminines (for ex., комната has комнаты as both nom pl and gen sg).  Since in Russian your claim is _not_ true for masculine nouns, I assumed that in general you were making the claim for fem nouns only. But as I re-read your post, I see that you don't actually say explicitly that this is a claim about feminines only (and in Russian it tends to be true for neuter nouns as well).

Now with respect to English being on your list, I assume, like Ihsiin, that an example of what you mean would be...
_girls_ (nom plural)
_girl's_ (gen sing)
(which are indeed pronounced identically).
END EDIT

Of course, for English nouns, the other plural "cases" and "genders" are identical to the nominative "feminine". And the other genders in the singular genitive are identical to the feminine.  But this fact per se doesn't negate your claim.

What should be noted, however, is that this -s ending in the fem gen sg seems to be a generalization of an earlier English genitive -s that was present only in the masc and neuter. (The possessive pronouns still show this pattern: _hi*s* name, it*s* name, her name_.) So (unless I'm overlooking something) it seems that including English on your list is questionable if your claim is about feminines and you're interested in genetic links with other I-E families (and beyond).

EDIT: The Old Eng _masc_ nom pl does share an -s with the _masc_ gen sg, but masc is the one gender in which your claim doesn't hold in Russian. So it would be good to have a clear statement of what your claim is, and a list of languages in which it truly holds.


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## sakvaka

That doesn't occur in Finnish:

_autot_ - cars
_auton_ - car's

Or wait, maybe there is a clue:
_autosi_ - your car / your cars
_autosi_ - your car's

The possessive endings of personal pronouns get rid of case markers in nominative and genitive singular.


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## Maroseika

sokol said:


> And in fact the difference in accent with some nouns should not at all be discredited as 'minor' difference: differing accent often points to different roots and origins.


Unless just a way to avoid ambiguous homonymy?


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## jazyk

It doesn't work in Modern Greek either: η θάλασσα (i thálassa, the sea, nominative singular), της θάλασσας (tis thálassas, of the sea, genitive singular), οι θάλασσες (i thálasses, the seas, nominative plural).


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## sokol

Maroseika said:


> Unless just a way to avoid ambiguous homonymy?


I can only suspect that it is similar in Russian (never tried to find out, but also don't know enough about Russian and its history), but in South Slavic (Slovene, BCS) difference in accent usually either goes back to a different root or is a part of the declension paradigm: that is, certain cases may take certain accents. (Paradigms however always are tricky as through paradigmatic levelling many original accents have been levelled to 'unhistoric' ones, especially in Slovene there are many examples for this; as far as I know, there was much less paradigmatic levelling in Russian.)

For this reason, I would suggest not to underestimate the historic relevance of difference in accent. However, I never really delved deeper into this topic - as it is a very difficult one (and as I never even managed to pronounce modern accents of Slovene and Croatian/Serbian close to correct, I never achieved more than poor approximations).


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## miguel89

In the case of IE languages, couldn't it be an initial similarity in PIE that was kept in some of its descendants through regular sound changes?


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## Angelo di fuoco

In Latin, as far as I know, there is the expression "pater familias", where familias is the older form of the singular genitive (it is called a-declension, isn't it?), and in this case it is identical with the plural accusative form.
Can anybody tell about the form in the Baltic languages?


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## Christo Tamarin

Tjahzi said:


> I've noticed this very interesting pattern, that appears to be found in most inflecting languages: the nominative plural and the genitive singular forms are identical.
> ..
> To sum, this clearly seems to have been present in Proto-IE, which leads to the interesting question of whether it could be more widespread than that. Obviously, it's extremely unlikely to appear anywhere but in inflecting languages, which means Altaic and Finno-Ugric should be excluded, but what about Semitic and Indo-Aryan languages. My knowledge of these are limited, but I would be very happy if you could fill me in on whether they exhibit this trait as well.
> 
> Also, if you disagree about or have any comments regarding my above list, feel free to point it out.


About Old-Slavonic (the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages):
A-stem Genitive Singular was very close to *Accusative* Plural. This was inherited from PIE. Those forms could differ by accent type and position only.
A-stem *Nominative* Plural was identical to * Accusative* Plural: Slavonic development. No differences until the development of animated noun declension.
In PIE, the following endings could be supposed for A-stems: *-as* in Genitive Singular and *-ans* in Accusative Plural. These endings merged in Slavonic and Greek, at least.

So, the discussed phenomena should be restricted to A-stems (at least, O-stems should be excluded) and attributed primarily to the Accusative Plural rather than and secondarily to Nominative Plural.


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## Ben Jamin

Tjahzi said:


> I've noticed this very interesting pattern, that appears to be found in most inflecting languages: the nominative plural and the genitive singular forms are identical. I've found this trait in the following of the Indo-European languages:
> 
> Slavic languages:
> 
> All East Slavic.*
> All West Slavic.*
> BCS and Slovene.*


 
It does work for some Polish nouns (ending in a 'hard' consonant +a), but not for others:
Nom sing: rac*ja* 
Gen. sing: racji
Nom. pl. racje

Nom sing: ci*sza*
Gen. sing ciszy
Nom. pl. cisze

Nom sing: baś*ń *
Gen. sing: baśni
Nom. pl.: baśnie

Nom sing: balia
Gen. sing: balii
Nom. pl.: balie
 
And the same for endings i nom sing: -ć, -dź, -l, -ż, -ź


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## Tjahzi

Wow, I never imagined so many answers so quickly. Thanks all!

Regarding what my actual question is, I think I'll settle for "How come so many (IE-)languages exhibit this pattern (for feminine nouns)? What could the origin be? What might have triggered it? Could the same factor have triggered it in other languages as well?". 
As such, considering the great amount of changes that the English language has undergone, mainly under heavy influence of other languages, I doubt it's of much use when answering the above question. I admit just adding it since it marked such a stark contrast to the synthetic languages on the list. 

The first time I spotted this pattern was when I was studying Latin and discovered that, in addition to all the other obvious similarities to Russian, it shared the trait of having identical *nom. pl. *and *gen. sg.* forms for some feminine nouns. Not to the same extent, of course, since virtually _all_ Russian feminine nouns have identical forms, but considering the more varied declension patterns found in Latin, I ignored that circumstance.
 What really triggered me to investigate this closer however, was the discovery of that the very same pattern could be recognized in such a (at least geographically) remote language as Icelandic. This time for an even smaller proportion of the feminine nouns, but still, it was present. As such, I think there is reason to believe that there must be a common origin here, which interest me more than the fact that various languages/declension patterns have diverged since. I don't know if it started out as 100% identical and diverged since, or the opposite, but the fact that it appears in all major branches (Romance, Germanic, Slavic), and (usually) in the case of feminine nouns, seems to indicate some sort of common origin. 
(Also, do note that in Latin, the *nom. pl. *and *gen. sg. *are identical, while *acc. pl. *is different.)

I ruled out Finno-Ugric based on the "_-t _≠ _-n_" observation, but Maroseika's example is very interesting. Although this is obviously not stemming from PIE, there could be a connection regarding the "underlying reason" (although I can't even imagine it at this point).

As for Greek, and other languages not belonging to the big three branches mentioned above, it seems that neither Classical Greek, Albanian, Armenian or any living Celtic language exhibit this pattern. However, Both major Baltic languages as well as the long extinct Gothic clearly do.

Christo Tamarin, by _Old-Slavonic_, do you mean _Old Church Slavonic_ or _Proto-Slavic_ (because I can only agree about the latter being "the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages")?
However, considering the greater amount of feminine nouns belong to the _a/ja-stem_ (and the _o-stem_ is made up of masculine and neuter nouns), I agree with you about the _a-stem_ being the one of interest. Also, from what I've gathered so far, it seems to me that in OCS, feminine nouns of the _a/ja-stem_ had identical forms for *nom. pl. *and *gen. sg. *(but the *acc. pl. *was indeed different).


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## Christo Tamarin

Tjahzi said:


> Christo Tamarin, by _Old-Slavonic_, do you mean _Old Church Slavonic_ or _Proto-Slavic_ (because I can only agree about the latter being "the ancestor of all modern Slavic languages")?



The phenomena can be attributed to both OCS and proto-Slavic. I mean:



Christo Tamarin said:


> A-stem Genitive Singular was very close to *Accusative* Plural. This was inherited from PIE. Those forms could differ by accent type and position only.
> A-stem *Nominative* Plural was identical to * Accusative* Plural: Slavonic development. No differences until the development of animated noun declension.



Later, Slavic developed the animated noun declension and the Accusative Plural of animated nouns took the forms of Genitive Plural.

On the other hand, the term "proto-Slavic language" is not well defined. Also, the term "language" is not defined, as you know. So, we may consider that a language is implemented by a set of spoken dialects and can have one or more literary forms. Thus, at the time OCS emerged, late 9th century, we may affirm that there were several spoken Slavic dialects of a Slavic language. Later, those dialects developed into separate language. But, at that time those were still dialects of one language. OCS was developed as a literary language based on the Slavic dialect close to Constantinople and the Bulgarian capitals, most probably, but nevertheless it was later accepted as a literary language in Russia. The modern Russian language does continue both OCS, which has south-Slavic origin, and the local dialects. If so, then we have to consider all spoken Slavic dialects at that time being part of the same language. However, there is no clear term to denote that language. So, we may call it simply Slavonic or Slavic.



Tjahzi said:


> Also, from what I've gathered so far, it seems to me that in OCS, feminine nouns of the _a/ja-stem_ had identical forms for *nom. pl. *and *gen. sg. *(but the *acc. pl. *was indeed different).


For unanimated A-stems, Nominative Plural is identical to Accusative Plural which on the other hand is very close to Genitive Singular. 

Before developing the animated noun category, this rule applied to all A-stems. Afterwards, for animated nouns, the Nominative Plural remained identical to the old Accusative Plural, but the new Accusative Plural, for all stems, took the form of Genitive Plural.


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## Ben Jamin

Christo Tamarin said:


> ...
> Also, the term *"language" is not defined*, as you know.
> 
> ... Thus, at the time OCS emerged, late 9th century, we may affirm that there were several spoken Slavic dialects of a Slavic *language*.


 
Isn't it inconsistent that you state that >>*"language" is not defined<<* and at the same time define a dialect through *language*? Dialect then becomes undefined as well.


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## sokol

Ben Jamin said:


> Isn't it inconsistent that you state that >>*"language" is not defined<<* and at the same time define a dialect through *language*? Dialect then becomes undefined as well.



There's a rather lengthy discussion about this topic here - as you know, as you've contributed there.  Putting my mod hat halfway on, I suggest continuing discussion of this topic in that thread - or in a new one if you'd like to start one with a significantly different formulation of question, with different emphasis, rather than in this thread where it could lead to a lengthy off-topic discussion. 

All Christo was saying there is that it is difficult to say how exactly so-called "OCS" and "proto-Slavic" are defined. The term "dialect" is, in this context, quite clear - it is one single set of rules (phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax), a linguistic code; and proto-Slavic (as the term is used by linguists) consisted of several such "dialects". So there is really no reason to discuss this in the context of this thread's question (but of course it could be food for thought in that other thread, or any other new thread).


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## Ben Jamin

sokol said:


> There's a rather lengthy discussion about this topic here - as you know, as you've contributed there.  Putting my mod hat halfway on, I suggest continuing discussion of this topic in that thread - or in a new one if you'd like to start one with a significantly different formulation of question, with different emphasis, rather than in this thread where it could lead to a lengthy off-topic discussion.
> 
> All Christo was saying there is that it is difficult to say how exactly so-called "OCS" and "proto-Slavic" are defined. The term "dialect" is, in this context, quite clear - it is one single set of rules (phonetics/phonology, morphology, syntax), a linguistic code; and proto-Slavic (as the term is used by linguists) consisted of several such "dialects". So there is really no reason to discuss this in the context of this thread's question (but of course it could be food for thought in that other thread, or any other new thread).


Yes, I know it's off topic here, but I think that this moment is worth a further discussion and spreading to other users of the forums. That's why I took the liberty to mention it in this thread.


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## Sepia

Tjahzi said:


> I've noticed this very interesting pattern, that appears to be found in most inflecting languages: the nominative plural and the genitive singular forms are identical. I've found this trait in the following of the Indo-European languages:
> 
> Slavic languages:
> 
> All East Slavic.*
> All West Slavic.*
> BCS and Slovene.*
> 
> *I'm aware of the fact that stress/accent sometimes separate the forms, but there _are_ a lot identical pairs. Additionally, in these languages, neuter nouns also exhibit this trait.
> 
> Romance Languages:
> 
> Latin.*
> Romanian.**
> 
> *In Latin, some masculine nouns follow this pattern as well.
> **In Romanian, the genitive and the dative are identical. Also, I discovered a few neuter and masculine nouns that also had identical Nom. pl. and Gen. sg. forms. However, those had identical forms in Nom. sg. and Gen. pl. as well.
> 
> Germanic languages:
> 
> Icelandic+Faroese.*
> English.**
> German.***
> 
> *Although only the first class of feminine nouns (and a few of the third class) exhibit this pattern, it's present.
> **Interestingly enough, despite lacking gender, English clearly exhibits this trait, although the forms are orthographically distinguished.
> ***Extremely irregularly, and not for any feminine nouns as far as I can tell, so technically, it shouldn't be on the list.
> 
> 
> To sum, this clearly seems to have been present in Proto-IE, which leads to the interesting question of whether it could be more widespread than that. Obviously, it's extremely unlikely to appear anywhere but in inflecting languages, which means Altaic and Finno-Ugric should be excluded, but what about Semitic and Indo-Aryan languages. My knowledge of these are limited, but I would be very happy if you could fill me in on whether they exhibit this trait as well.
> 
> Also, if you disagree about or have any comments regarding my above list, feel free to point it out.


 


I am not sure if I am reading or combining your footnotes right. Why DO you have High German on your list?

At least genitive singular would be "der" and nom. plur. would be "die" - identical with fem. nom. sing and not gen.


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