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Old Norse has three categories of verbs (strong, weak, & present-preterite) and two categories of nouns (strong, weak). Conjugation and declension are carried out by a mix of inflection and two nonconcatenative morphological processes: umlaut, a backness-based alteration to the root vowel; and ablaut, a replacement of the root vowel, in verbs.
Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in four grammatical cases – nominative, accusative, genitive and dative, in singular and plural. Some pronouns (first and second person) have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The nouns have three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine or neuter - and adjectives and pronouns are declined to match the gender of nouns. The genitive is used partitively, and quite often in compounds and kennings (e.g.: Urðarbrunnr, the well of Urðr; Lokasenna, the gibing of Loki). Most declensions (of nouns and pronouns) use -a as a regular genitive plural ending, and all declensions use -um as their dative plural ending.
All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms,[1] and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals.[2]
The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as lim and mund.[cv 1]
- ^ Old Norse for Beginners, Grammar reference: Neuter nouns.
- ^ Old Norse for Beginners, Grammar reference: Feminine nouns.
Cite error: There are <ref group=cv> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=cv}} template (see the help page).