Declensions

As I have said earlier, the two most important sections of Konkani grammar are conjugations and declensions. It might perhaps appear more systematic to first cover the conjugations in their entirety and then move on to declensions. However, I don’t believe that would be a practical proposition. Instead, I  have decided to treat both of them almost alternately and also deal with other grammatical issues, side by side.  So let me start with a little introduction to a somewhat complex aspect of our language: its declensions.

I don’t need to define what a declension is. I would rather describe declensions simply as different forms that a noun, a pronoun or an adjective can take to perform its different functions and in the process convey different meanings. Let us take a simple example: the English pronoun, I. I is said to be in the nominative  (that is, the plainest) form, and it can take various other forms like my, mine and me. In the sentence, “You can see me”, the word me is the direct object of the verb to see, and that is called the accusative.

However the same word me can also be an indirect object in another sentence, “Please give me the book”.  In this second sentence, the book is the direct object of give and is in the accusative case, while me is the indirect object and is said to be in the dative. Note that the word me takes the same form both in the accusative (as in “you can see me“) and in the dative (as in “give me the book”), except that, when you use the word in the dative, the sentence can be slightly altered and the word me can be replaced by to me, which would not be possible with the word book. Thus, instead of saying, “Give me the book,” you could say, “Give the book to me”, but you cannot say, “Give me to the book.”  In Konkani too, the accusative and dative forms of words are often identical, just like in English, but they play different roles in the respective sentences when they are declined differently.

My is yet another form of I, and it is called the genitive. Now, all the forms that the word I takes, e.g., me, mine and my, are called cases. So far we have spoken about the nominative, accusative, dative and genitive cases. But in Konkani, there are other cases as well, viz., the vocative, the instrumental, the locative and the ablative. And then there are the post positions which correspond exactly to prepositions but are grammatically just a fraction of an inch away from the declensions. We shall cover all these in due time.

When a Konkani noun or adjective is declined, it takes different forms or inflections for different cases. But in each of these inflections there are two distinct modifications that take place in the word: first, the word takes what I call a flex stem (some grammarians call it a crude form), and this flex stem then takes on the desired case ending to form different cases.  Let us take a simple Konkani word put 

(meaning son). That is the nominative singular of the word. Now if you want to change it to any other case (in the singular), you have first to get to its flex stem, which is puta. (As it happens, that brings us directly to the vocative case, because this flex stem itself, i.e.,  puta, happens to be the vocative, meaning “O son”; and such, in fact, is the case with all Konkani nouns in the singular: the naked flex stem itself, without any appendage to it, is the vocative singular of that noun which, however, isn’t the case with the vocative plurals).

Now what we have done so far with the word put, is to shape it into its flex stem, puta. If you then want to put the word put into any other case: genitive, dative or any other (except the vocative, as explained above), all you have to do is to grab its flex stem, and append to it the necessary case ending. Thus if you want the genitive case (i.e., of the son or son‘s), all you have to do is to take the flex stem puta and add the case ending cho 

(or chi  or chem  etc.) and you get the genitive: putacho (or putachi, etc.). Or if you want to change the word to its dative (to the son), you just need to add k to the flex stem puta to give you the dative (or accusative) putak. In the same way, in order to get the instrumental case, you take the same flex stem puta and add the case ending n and you get putan.

Once you understand this inflection technique, you will find it much easier to decline any noun, masculine, feminine or neuter, into any case you need to. What you must know is that every noun can have two flex stems, one for the singular and the other for the plural, while every declension too can have two case endings, one for the singular and the other for the plural. As simple as that.

What about the plural inflections? To complete our illustration, let us take the plural of put, i.e., son. The nominative plural here, put, happens to be the same as the nominative singular, put, so that “one son” = ek put,

 while “five sons” = panch put  — the word put remaining unchanged. (Such isn’t often the case, though).

Now let us proceed with the other cases in the plural. The plural flex stem of put is putam.

 In fact, all plural flex stems end with the nasal m (although our spelling conventions may require this m to be changed to n in the case of certain case endings, i.e., for certain inflections). Thus the vocative and the instrumental plural of put are putamnô  and putamnim  respectively, while the genitive and the dative are putancho (chi, chem etc.)  and putank  respectively.  That may not be so hard to remember, because whether the plural flex stem ends with an m or an n depends on the particular case ending and not on the noun, and so it applies to all plural nouns irrespective of their gender.

All this may initially appear to be a little complicated, but it isn’t really as hard to learn as it may appear. Future posts will explain and exemplify things and make them clearer. However, I am convinced that the best way to tackle declensions is to package them along with the vocabulary. So, when learning Konkani nouns, you do what the Romans do, or rather, adopt a method similar to what Latin students use: when learning a Konkani noun, bundle it up with its plural as well as its singular and plural flex stems! In other words, let vocabulary-learning take some load of (and off) the Konkani grammar! To continue with our example of the word put, when you learn the Konkani word for son, you learn the word thus: put, puta, put, putam,

 i.e., nominative singular followed by the  singular flex stem, then nominative plural followed by the plural flex stem. And you do this with every noun you come across!

Konkani Made Easy!