Испан тіліндегі есімдердің грамматикалық ерекшеліктері

Grammatical feature of Spanish

The Spanish language has nouns that express concrete objects, groups and classes of objects, qualities, feelings and other abstractions. All nouns have a conventional grammatical gender. Countable nouns inflect for number (singular and plural). However, the division between uncountable and countable nouns is more ambiguous than in English.

Spanish nouns belong to either the masculine or the feminine grammatical gender. Gender, in this case, refers to a grammatical system and is not necessarily connected with biological sex or gender. The masculine gender is inclusive and is used for plural forms of groups of both genders. For example, los niños, grammatically masculine, may mean 'the children' or 'the boys'. The feminine gender is exclusive in the plural: las niñas 'the girls' refers only to girls, not children of both biological sexes or genders. However, some proponents of nonsexist language reform promote alternative forms with desdoblamiento, such as los niños y las niñas or las niñas y los niños. The manner in which gender is assigned to nouns in Spanish works differently depending on which of two classes the noun belongs to. One class includes certain nouns referring to humans and animals, and the other class consists of nouns not in the first class. For this class of nouns, the masculine and feminine often take different forms. By convention, the masculine form is treated as the lemma (that is, the form listed in dictionaries) and the feminine form as the marked form. For nouns of this class with the masculine form ending in o, the feminine form typically replaces the o with a. For example, el abuelo 'grandfather' becomes la abuela 'grandmother'. Exceptionally, some nouns of this class with the masculine form ending in o lack a distinct feminine form. In these cases, the gender of the noun is marked only by the determiners or adjectives that agree with it. For instance, the feminine form of el soldado 'the (male) soldier' is la soldado 'the (female) soldier', with only the gender of the article (el/la) distinguishing them in this case. For nouns of this class with the masculine form ending in or, ón, ín, és, and án, the feminine form adds an a. For example, el doctor 'the (male) doctor' becomes la doctora 'the (female) doctor'. Other examples include el/la periodista 'journalist', el/la testigo 'witness', and el/la estudiante 'student'. For some nouns in this class called heteronyms (heterónimos), the masculine and feminine forms are distinct lemmas. Much as English has the distinct lemmas bull and cow, for example, Spanish has the distinct forms el toro 'bull' and la vaca 'cow'. For these nouns, the masculine plural form is typically used for groups containing both male and female members. A group containing both actors (los actores) and actresses (las actrices), for instance, is referred to as los actores 'actors'. Exceptionally, an animal species may be represented by the feminine lemma rather than the masculine (much as the English goose can refer either to the species as a whole or specifically females of the species when contrasted with gander). For example, la vaca can refer to the species 'cattle' or the female of the species 'cow', but el toro refers only to the male of the species 'bull'.

Spanish has vestiges of a neuter gender; this is seen in pronouns like esto, eso, aquello, and ello, some instances of pronoun lo, and the article lo. Bello also notes that words such as nada, poco, algo, and mucho can be used as neuters in some contexts. However, all this doesn't affect nouns, which never have a neutral gender.

People's names agree with the sex of the person, even when the name ending might seem the opposite: Chema es guapo, Amparo es guapa. The same rule applies to those animals which have a name.

Spanish has two grammatical numbers: singular and plural. The singular form is the lemma, and the plural is the marked form. 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. In this way, nouns differ from other Spanish words that show number contrast (i. e., adjectives, determiners, and verbs), which vary in number to agree with nouns. In the noun phrase el lápiz y el bolígrafo rojos 'the red pencil and pen', for example, the adjective rojos is plural because the two singular nouns (el lápiz and el bolígrafo) are coordinated via y. In cases in which an adjective precedes the coordinated nouns, however, that adjective is usually in the singular form. Much as the English nouns mathematics and eyeglasses, for instance, are always plural, the Spanish nouns las matemáticas 'mathematics' and las gafas 'eyeglasses' are always plural. Some of these nouns do not share their always plural status with their English counterparts. For example, las vacaciones is rare in the singular form, corresponding to both 'vacation' and 'vacations' in English. Many of the always plural nouns fall into specific semantic classes. For example, many are related to foods (e. g., comestibles 'groceries', espaguetis 'spaghetti'), amounts of money (e. g., emolumentos 'emoluments', finanzas 'finances'), and places (e. g., estribaciones 'foothills', exteriores 'exteriors'). Other Spanish nouns are always singular. Such nouns are often noncountable nouns, such as el caos 'chaos' and la grima 'disgust'.

A noun that ends in an unstressed vowel adds s to form the plural. A noun that ends in a consonant (including y) adds es to form the plural. For nouns that end in z, the z changes to c when the es plural morpheme is added. The noun la luz 'light', for example, has the plural form las luces 'lights'. A noun that ends in a stressed vowel will add s or es to form the plural. while nouns ending in í and ú can admit both variants ( s and es) to form the plural. For example, el café 'café' has the plural form los cafés while the noun el tabú 'taboo' has the plural forms los tabús and los tabúes. Polysyllabic nouns that end in an s following an unstressed vowel do not add an overt plural morpheme while other nouns ending in s behave as expected for a noun ending in a consonant, adding es to form the plural. For instance, the noun el jueves 'Thursday' has the plural form los jueves 'Thursdays'.

The formation of plurals for foreign words borrowed into Spanish do not always follow the same rules as more established Spanish nouns. As a general rule, borrowed words ending in a vowel (stressed or unstressed) will add an s to the singular to form the plural. For example, the plural form of the English borrowing el interviú 'interview' is los interviús 'interviews'. English loanwords often keep their English plural forms in Spanish. Some Latin nouns ending in m may simply add s to form the plural (e. g., el referéndum 'referendum' and los referéndums 'referenda/referendums'). Other Latin nouns ending in m allow either an invariant plural form or a plural form ending in s. For example, el quórum 'quorum' allows the plural forms los quórum and los quórums. Due to the influence of English, some plurals of Latin words in Spanish occasionally occur with the plural marker a, as in los córpora 'corpora' and los data 'data', but such plural forms are disprefered by some prescriptivists that favor either invariant plurals (e. g., los corpus) or Hispanicized forms (e. g., los datos). Some loanwords enter Spanish in their plural forms but are reanalyzed as singular nouns (e. g., the Italian plurals el confeti 'confetti', el espagueti 'spaghetti', and el ravioli 'ravioli'). These words then follow the typical morphological rules of Spanish, essentially double marking the plural (e. g., los confetis, los espaguetis, and los raviolis).

In some varieties of Antillean Spanish, an additional e or es is added to the more traditional forms of certain plurals. For example, las cásase can be found in place of las casas 'houses'. Similarly, los güisquises can be found in place of los güisquis 'whiskies'. In certain registers, nouns with plural referents can occur in the singular form when the plural is implied elsewhere, such as through the determiners mucho 'many' or tanto 'so many'. For example, a speaker might say mucha foto 'many photos' or tanto soldado 'so many soldiers' while a more formal register would require muchas fotos and tantos soldados, respectively. While nouns ending in í often allow either s or es to form the plural, more formal registers typically prefer the es ending, especially in demonyms and the names of ethnic groups. For example, bengalí 'Bengali' can take the plural form bengalíes or bengalís, but bengalíes is typically preferred in more formal registers.

Suffixes expressing a wide range of affective meanings can be added to Spanish nouns. These affective meanings include size, affection, disapproval, irony, and the like. However, the meanings of nouns derived from these suffixes is not always predictable. Affective suffixes are derivational rather than inflectional, but they share certain properties with inflectional suffixes. Like inflectional suffixes, affective suffixes are so widespread that words created from them tend not to be included in traditional dictionaries except when the resulting words have drastically different meanings. Also like inflectional suffixes, affective suffixes do not typically change the grammatical category of the base word; that is, a noun that takes an affective suffix will remain a noun after doing so, much as a noun that takes a plural inflectional suffix will remain a noun after doing so. But unlike inflectional suffixes, affective suffixes tend to add lexical, rather than grammatical, information to the base. Similarly, noncount nouns are less likely than count nouns to take affective suffixes. In the clause me fue de poca ayuda 'he was of little help to me', for example, the noun ayuda 'help' is modified by the adjective poca 'little' instead of taking a diminutive suffix because the clause uses a noncount sense of the noun. In the clause le pidió una ayudita 'he asked for a little help', on the other hand, the diminutive form ayudita is possible because the clause uses a count sense of the noun. Various sociolinguistic factors affect the use of affective suffixes. For instance, they are generally used more often by speakers of Mexican Spanish than by speakers of European Spanish or Rioplatense Spanish and more often by women than by men. Additionally, affective suffixes are more common in registers directed toward children but less common in highly formal registers, such as in academic, legal, and administrative writing. Three classes of affective suffixes are traditionally distinguished: diminutives, augmentatives, and pejoratives (though the class of pejorative suffixes occasionally intersects with the other two).

Diminutive suffixes generally convey small size. They most often indicate size when applied to nouns referring to material entities. Applying the diminutive suffix ita to casa 'house', for example, produces casita, which refers to a small house. When diminutive suffixes are applied to nouns of other semantic classes, the suffix may convey additional or alternate meanings. Applying a diminutive suffix to nouns that refer to professions, for instance, often signals contempt, as in un maestrillo mediocre 'a mediocre teacher'. For nouns that denote actions and events, diminutive suffixes generally indicate short duration, as in paseíto 'short walk'.