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There are two principal parts for Latin nouns: the nominative singular and the genitive singular. Each declension can be unequivocally identified by the ending of the genitive singular (-ae, -i, -is, -ūs, -ei). The stem of the noun can be identified by the form of the genitive singular as well. There are five declensions for Latin nouns:
Spanish has two grammatical numbers: singular and plural. [27] The singular form is the lemma, and the plural is the marked form. [28] Whether a noun is singular or plural generally depends on the referent of the noun, with singular nouns typically referring to one being and plural nouns to multiple.
Spanish is a grammatically inflected language, which means that many words are modified ("marked") in small ways, usually at the end, according to their changing functions. Verbs are marked for tense, aspect, mood, person, and number (resulting in up to fifty conjugated forms per verb). Nouns follow a two-gender system and are marked for number.
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending-s (or -es), whereas possession is always shown by the enclitic-'s or, for plural forms ending in s, by just an apostrophe. Consider, for example, the forms of the noun girl.
On the other hand, 3rd declension nouns and adjectives have -es in both nominative and accusative, however, so the -s plural for these words could derive from either case form. There is also evidence that Vulgar Latin may have preserved the nominative plural ending -as in the 1st declension, attested in Old Latin and replaced by -ae in literary ...
The adverbial ending -(i)ter is used to form adverbs from 3rd declension adjectives, for example celer "quick", celeriter "quickly". Other endings such as -ō, -e, -tim are also found. The comparative form of an adverb is the same as the neuter nominative singular form of a comparative adjective and usually ends in -ius.
Romance languages have a number of shared features across all languages: Romance languages are moderately inflecting, i.e. there is a moderately complex system of affixes (primarily suffixes) that are attached to word roots to convey grammatical information such as number, gender, person, tense, etc. Verbs have much more inflection than nouns.
When the final consonants in these endings are dropped, the result is -u for both; this became -o in Spanish. However, a word like Latin iste had the neuter istud; the former became este and the latter became esto in Spanish. Another sign that Spanish once had a grammatical neuter exists in words that derive from neuter plurals.