User:Greek Fellows/Old Norse/Noun Declension

In this chapter, the declension patterns for nouns are explained.

Introduction
Nouns can be categorized by their grammatical genders. A noun is either masculine (m), feminine (f) or neuter (n).

Nouns decline by number. A noun can be singular (sg) or plural (pl).

Nouns decline by case. A noun can be in the nominative case (n), the accusative case (a), the dative case (d) or the genitive case (g).

The declension of every noun follows either a strong declension pattern or a weak declension pattern. Strong nouns in the nominative singular usually end with a consonant, while weak nouns always end with a vowel in the nominative singular.

The declension patterns are named by the vowels in which the Proto-Germanic ancestor of Old Norse nouns ended.

a-stem, ja-stem and wa-stem
Old Norse nouns whose Proto-Germanic ancestors ended in a, ja, or wa follow this declension pattern. The table below shows the ending for each combination of number and case.


 * -∅ is the null morpheme; no ending has to be suffixed to create the accusative singular.
 * In the genitive singular, some nouns take the ending -s while others take the ending -ar. Some nouns can take both endings.
 * In the dative plural, the u in the ending -um can cause an u-mutation in the noun stem which contains the vowel a. When this occurs, a stressed a becomes ǫ, and an unstressed a becomes u.