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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:
In the United States, in grammars such as Gildersleeve and Lodge's Latin Grammar (1895), the traditional order is used, with the genitive case in the second place and ablative last. In the popularly used Wheelock's Latin (1956, 7th edition 2011) and Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar (1903), however, the vocative is placed at the end.
Thus, the genitive always ends with a vowel, and the singular genitive is sometimes (in a subset of words ending with a vocal in nominative) identical in form to nominative. In Finnish, in addition to the uses mentioned above, there is a construct where the genitive is used to mark a surname.
The genitive singular endings include -is < -es and -us < *-os. [40] In the genitive plural, some forms appear to affix the case ending to the genitive singular rather than the stem: regerum < *reg-is-um. [41] In the dative singular, -ī succeeded -eī and -ē after 200 BC. In the accusative singular, -em < *-ṃ after a consonant. [40]
In the genitive singular, names in -ēs, parisyllabic, take -ī as well as -is. Some feminine nouns in -ô have the genitive in -ūs. Greek names ending in -eus are declined both according to the Greek and according to the Latin second declension (but the genitive -eī and the dative-eō are often pronounced as one syllable in poets).
One distinguishing feature of third-declension nouns is a genitive singular ending of a short vowel and s: Latin rēg-is "of a king" Greek χειρ-ός (cheir-ós) "of a hand", and Sanskrit bhagavat-as "of the blessed (one)".
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.
The fifth declension, with a predominant ending letter of e, is signified by the genitive singular ending of -eī. There are seven Latin noun cases, which also apply to adjectives and pronouns and mark a noun's syntactic role in the sentence by means of inflections.