Number
Number in Ojibwe is a simple singular/plural contrast. Nouns and pronouns can be either singular or plural, and verbs inflect for the number of their subject and object, although some nouns and verbs lack singular forms. Plural forms differ from word to word depending on the word's gender, root, and historical stress. By examining the plural form of the word, one can generally determine the word's gender and root. Animate plurals end in -g, while inanimate plural nouns (and obviative nouns) end in -n. The underlying form of a root determines the "linking vowel" — the vowel that appears before the plural suffix (-g or -n) but after the root itself.
Read more about this topic: Ojibwe Grammar
Famous quotes containing the word number:
“He is the richest man who knows how to draw a benefit from the labors of the greatest number of men, of men in distant countries, and in past times.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.”
—Cyril Connolly (19031974)
“A great number of the disappointments and mishaps of the troubled world are the direct result of literature and the allied arts. It is our belief that no human being who devotes his life and energy to the manufacture of fantasies can be anything but fundamentally inadequate”
—Christopher Hampton (b. 1946)