Catalan Language - Grammar - Gender and Number Inflection

Gender and Number Inflection

In gender inflection, the most notable feature is (compared to Portuguese, Spanish or Italian), the disapparition of the typical masculine suffix -o. Thus, the alternance of -o/-a, has been substituted by ø/-a. There are only a few exceptions, like minso/minsa ("scarce"). Many not completely predictable morphological alternations may occur, like:

• Affrication: boig/boja ("insane") vs. leig/letja ("ugly")
• Loss of n: pla/plana ("flat") vs. segon/segona ("second")
• Final obstruent devoicing: sentit/sentida ("felt") vs. dit/dita ("said")

Catalan has few suppletive couplets, like Italian and Spanish, and unlike French. Thus, Catalan has noi/noia ("boy"/"girl") and gall/gallina ("cock"/"chicken"), while French has garçon/fille and coq/poule.

There is a tendency to abandon traditionally gender-invariable adjectives in favour of marked ones, something prevalent in Occitan and French. Thus, one can find bullent/bullenta ("boiling") in constrast with traditional bullent/bullent.

Like in the other Western Romance languages, the main plural expression is the suffix -s, which may create morphological alternations akin the ones found in gender inflection, albeit more rarely. The most important one is the addition of -o- before certain consonant groups, a phonetic phenomenon that does not affect feminine forms: el pols/els polsos ("the pulse"/"the pulses") vs. la pols/les pols ("the dust"/"the dusts").