Dual Number
The dual number has its specific inflections, that are similar with plural inflections with some specific differences:
- Nominative, accusative or vocative: masculine words end with -(i)u, feminine with -i
- Genitive and locatives are the same as in the plural.
- Dative has the inflection of the plural dative, but without the final -s, so -(i)ams, -iems, -(i)oms, -ėms, -ims in the plural give -(i)am, -iem, -(i)om, -ėm, -im in the dual respectively
- Instrumental has the same inflections as the dual dative, but they are pronounced in different intonation.
Other features:
- It depends on the paradigm, whether -(i) in the brackets is used or not. The masculine i-paradigm always has -iu as the nominative inflection.
Irregularities:
- A word du - 'two' has three modifications of the stem, d- (in nominative and accusative), dv- (in dative and instrumental) and dviej- (in genitive and locatives)
- Words mudu - 'we (both)', judu - 'you (both)', juodu - 'they (both)' (masculine), jiedvi - 'they (both)' (feminine), as well as šiuodu - 'these (both)', tuodu - 'that (both)', abudu - 'both' and their feminine counterparts have a specific paradigm, based on declension of a word du - 'two' (see an example in the paragraph about pronouns).
Read more about this topic: Lithuanian Declension, Declension By The Paradigms
Famous quotes containing the words dual and/or number:
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