User:AxaiosRex/telugunouns

Nouns in Telugu are words that refer to things, such as people, places, objects or abstract concepts.

Count vs. mass nouns
As in English, nouns in Telugu can be count nouns, which can be described with numerals, and mass nouns, whose quantities are described in terms of amounts. Telugu has two words which would translate to in English:  for count nouns and  for mass nouns. Mass nouns in Telugu can either be always plural or always singular:

Noun class
Telugu singular nouns fall into male and non-male classes, while in the plural nouns are either human or non-human. These are natural categories, meaning that there isn't any arbitrariness: the male category only includes singular nouns referring to male people, and the non-human category applies to the plurals of all nouns referring to things that are not humans. The only place we see agreement based on these classes is in the verbal morphology, when the noun in question is a 3rd-person subject of the verb.

Plural formation
The underlying plural morpheme in Telugu is. The basic rule to form a plural from a singular is to attach that morpheme to the end of the singular form, but there are various interactions, mostly involving sandhi, which complicate the plural system. Below is an overview of all of the phonological interactions and the expressions of the plural morpheme they create, as well as some exceptions:

Oblique stems
The only other true inflection in Telugu is the oblique-genitive form. Only nouns in this form can take postpositions, and most of the time the bare oblique serves as a genitive form. Nouns have both singular and plural oblique forms. The vast majority of oblique stems are exactly the same as the nominative, and this is the only productive way of forming oblique stems. There is also a class of words whose obliques have two allomorphs, one used only before the accusative/dative postpositions, and the other used before all others. Here's a list of examples of the various forms the oblique stem takes in different nounsː

Postpositions
These generally fill the role of prepositions in English, or that of cases in more fusional languages like Latin. There are two types of postpositions. Type I postpositions always end a word; once one is added, no other postposition can be added after it. Type II postpositions, which are often words themselves or shortened forms of words, will take other postpositions after them. Both types are written as separate words; that is to say, there is generally a space between the oblique stem and the postposition. Postpositions are mostly invariable, though there are a few that have phonologically-triggered allomorphy and some others which have long and short versions essentially in free variation.

Type I postpositions
In some senses these morphemes can be considered case endings, but they share enough characteristics with Type II postpositions that it makes sense to treat the two together. These morphemes can never stand alone; they must come after either a noun in oblique form or a Type II postposition.

Type II postpositions
These act as postpositions sometimes, in the sense that they can be added to a noun's oblique stem and have a meaning that would roughly correspond to that of a preposition or prepositional phrase in English. However, these can all act as both standalone nouns, some having their own distinct oblique stems, and can take other postpositions both while used as a noun and while used as a postposition.