2 nd Declension

1. 2nd Declension • DENT 5

2. Content • General information. • Paradigm of the 2nd declension. • Differences between -us / -er type and -um / -on type. • Vocabulary.

3. General information • 2nd declension contains mainly nouns of masculine and neutral gender. • Together with the 1st declension it creates comprehensive structure that contains all three genders. • The declension includes two separate paradigms for masculines and two for neutral.

4. Masculine Paradigms Note a difference in the stem between Nom. Sg. and Gen. Sg. of the word cancer. Technically the Nominative case has no ending, only stem. In all the remaining cases the “e” is missing from the stem and there is an ending added.

5. Neutral Paradigms

6. Comments on neutrals • There is one important feature which is typical for neutral nouns and adjectives throughout the whole Latin: endings in Nom. a Acc. grammatical cases has to be the same. • Paradigm “colon” covers limited amount of loanwords from Greek.

7. Feminines in the 2nd declension • There is a limited amount of words that use masculine paradigms from the 2nd declension but have feminine gender. If we use them separately or linked with other nouns, they behave exactly like masculines. So, there is no difference in endings between them and a paradigm nervus or cancer. But if we use them in connection with an adjective, the adjective will have ending which reflects correct (feminine) gender of the noun. This exception will be further explained in a lesson about adjectives. • Examples: methodus, periodus, paragraphus, diameter, alvus. • Word virus, i n. is flexed according to paradigm “nervus” but it is a neutral noun. Which means that once we append an adjective, the adjective will reflex neutral gender of “virus”.

8. The textbook • For vocabulary see p. 68 - 69. • For paradigms see p. 67. • For gender exceptions see p. 68 (middle).