Pashto nouns: gender, number and case

At a glance

• Every Pashto noun is masculine or feminine. Gender shows in the ending of the word, in how it makes its plural, and in the adjectives and verb forms that go with it. [3, 4]

• Masculine nouns mostly end in a consonant or -ay. Feminine nouns mostly end in -a, -ə, -e or -ay. Animate masculine plurals take -ān (-gān after a vowel), inanimate ones -úna, and most feminine ones -e. [3, 4]

• Tegey and Robson count two cases, direct and oblique. David adds the ablative and the vocative. Raverty counted seven in 1867 and Bellew three states. [1–4]

• The oblique is the form of a noun after da, ta, sara and other adpositions, and of the agent in the past tense of a transitive verb. [3, 4]

• Adjectives change for gender, number and case, in four classes. [3]

Gender is part of the word

Pashto keeps masculine and feminine, which Persian does not. Habibullah Tegey and Barbara Robson, in their 1996 reference grammar, say that every noun has one gender or the other, and that the gender decides the endings of its adjectives and, in a past transitive sentence, of the verb. [3] Words for male people and animals are masculine and for females feminine: khān خان, "landowner", and wux اوښ, "male camel", against pēghla پېغله, "girl". Most nouns for things have a gender with no natural reason, "thorn" (khār خار) masculine and "shoe" (paṇá پڼه) feminine. [3]

Anne Boyle David's descriptive grammar of 2014 sets out the usual endings. Masculine: any consonant, or -ay, stressed or not. Feminine: -a or -ə, -ay, or -e. The natural sex of a person overrides the ending, so mor مور, "mother", and lur لور, "daughter", end in consonants and are feminine. [4] Her pairs: saṛáy سړی, "man", and ṣ̌ə́dza ښځه, "woman"; shāgə́rd شاګرد, "student" (male), and shāgə́rda شاګرده, "student" (female); ghwāyí غوایی, "bull", and ghwā غوا, "cow". [4] For small animals the gender is arbitrary: David, citing Rishtin (1994), says "spider" is feminine and "fish" always masculine. A masculine noun in -i usually names a trade, like qāzi قاضي, "judge", and an -i noun for an idea, like duxmaní دښمني, "enmity", is usually feminine. [4]

The British grammarians described the same facts. Bellew, a surgeon of the Bengal army writing in 1867, gave the rule that nouns ending in a consonant are "as a rule" masculine and then listed the exceptions, among them mor "a mother", lur "a daughter", khor "a sister" and tror "aunt". [2] Raverty, a Bombay army officer, noted that some pairs of male and female are separate words: plār "father" and mor "mother", wrōr "brother" and khor "sister". He also sorted nouns by the final h: a sounded h, as in weshtah "hair", marks a masculine, and a silent one, as in khadza'h "a woman", a feminine. [1] Tegey and Robson put the line at stress instead. A stressed final -a is masculine, as in wextá "hair" and kārghá "crow", and an unstressed one feminine, as in the word for "woman". [3]

How many classes there are

Grammarians sort nouns into classes by their plural and oblique endings, and they do not agree on how many there are. Tegey and Robson say so at the head of their chapter: "The grammatical study of Pashto has not progressed to the point where there is widespread agreement on such basic topics as the number of noun classes." [3] They use four masculine classes (M1 to M4) and three feminine (F1 to F3), and name irregular nouns separately. Their grammar rests on the central dialect of Kabul. Herbert Penzl's 1955 grammar of Kandahari has five masculine and six feminine subclasses, and Tegey and Robson put many of the differences down to the difference of dialect. [3] David uses three classes, based only on the suffixes a noun takes, and treats changes inside the stem separately. [4]

Tegey and Robson's classes, with their examples:

• M1: consonant-final, mostly people and animals, plural in -ān: shāgə́rd شاګرد, "student", plural shāgərdā́n شاګردان. [3]

• M2: consonant-final, mostly things, plural in -úna: kor کور, "house", plural korúna کورونه. A few living things follow it: as اس, "horse", and plār پلار, "father". [3]

• M3: ending in -ay, plural in -i: melgə́ray ملګری, "friend", plural melgə́ri ملګري; paṭkə́y پټکی, "turban", plural paṭkí پټکي. [3]

• M4: ending in a stressed vowel, plural in -gān: māmā ماما, "uncle", plural māmāgā́n ماماګان. [3]

• F1: ending in -a, -ə or -e, plural in -e: xə́dza ښځه, "woman" (their central dialect says x for ښ), plural xə́dze ښځې. A few F1 words end in a consonant, like wrə́dz ورځ, "day". [3]

• F2: ending in -əy: koranə́y کورنۍ, "family". [3]

• F3: ending in a stressed vowel: tankhā́ تنخا, "salary", and paxtunkhwā́ پښتونخوا, "Pashtun homeland" (see Pashtunkhwa). [3]

Tribal names fall in the M3 class. Tegey and Robson point out that "many of the Pashtun tribe names are M3 nouns with last-syllable stress", among them Ahmadzay احمدزی, Achakzay اڅکزی and Afridai اپریدی, and that such nouns may have more than one plural. Their example is Ghalzay غلجی, with the direct plural ghəldzí or ghəldzyā́n. [3] The Ghilzai confederation is one of the tribes so named.

Plurals

The plural is how most classes show themselves. David points out that mor and lur look masculine, but their plurals, máynde مېندې, "mothers", and lúṇe لوڼې, "daughters", end in the feminine -e and not in the -ān or -úna of consonant-final masculines. [4] For masculines, David's table gives -gān (ګان) for living things and -úna (ونه) for the rest, with the oblique plurals -gāno and -úno. [4] The g of -gān often weakens or drops, so pil "elephant" has pilān, and dakú "bandit" can make either dakugān or dakwān. [4] David treats animacy as a grammatical feature and not a fact about the world, because plār "father" and trə́ "paternal uncle" take the inanimate endings. [4]

The ending -ina belongs to the Middle dialects. David's tables for Waziri and Dzadrani give -ina for inanimate masculine plurals, where the general language has -úna, and her Waziri examples, taken from John Lorimer's 1902 grammar and confirmed by asking a speaker, are paliz "kitchen garden", plural palizina, and tanur "oven", plural tanurina. [4] Tegey and Robson's central-dialect plural of "kitchen garden" is pālezúna. [3]

Many old nouns, mostly kinship terms, keep plurals of their own. Tegey and Robson list wror ورور, "brother", plural wrúna ورونه; khor خور, "sister", plural khwéynde خویندې; and zoy زوی, "son", plural zāmán زامن. [3] The word Pashtun is one: paxtún پښتون, plural paxtānə́ پښتانه, with the oblique singular the same as the plural and the oblique plural paxtanó پښتنو. [3] David explains that the words people use most, and care about most, tend to keep patterns lost elsewhere in the language. [4]

Four more points about number:

• After a number a masculine consonant-final noun takes a short -a in place of its plural: dre kóra درې کوره, "three houses", and pindzé daftára پنځه دفتره, "five offices". [3]

• Some nouns are plural only and take plural verbs and adjectives: wobá اوبه, "water", as in wobə́ khwə́ge di اوبه خوږې دي, "The water is sweet." [3] David gives the same for gdán "millet". [4]

• A masculine fruit or tree name often has no plural suffix, and the verb still goes plural: David has "I ate many mulberries" with tut and with tutān. [4]

• Arabic words come with their plurals: haywān حیوان, "animal", has haywānā́t حیوانات. David adds that this -at plural is feminine in Arabic but the nouns are masculine in Pashto. [3, 4]

Direct, oblique and vocative

Raverty's grammar, in its third edition of 1867, sets out seven cases on the Arabic scheme: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative and the "actor", which he says may be called instrumental. Most are marked by particles used with the noun, not by changing it. [1] Bellew's grammar of the same year says Pashto, "like the Arabic", recognises three states of the noun: the agent, the "adjunct or oblique", which takes in the genitive, dative, ablative, locative and vocative, and the "acted upon", and he says nominative and accusative have one form in all nouns. [2] Raverty took his examples from Pashto writers, among them Rahman Baba, Ahmad Shah Durrani, Abdul Hamid and Afzal Khan Khattak. Of the later grammars, Tegey and Robson report that Penzl has four cases, direct, oblique 1, oblique 2 and vocative, and MacKenzie four, direct, oblique, vocative and prepositional. [3]

The direct form is the dictionary form, the subject's and, in present-tense sentences, the object's: paxtún pə kābə́l ke wósi پښتون په کابل کښې اوسي, "The Pashtun lives in Kabul", and paxtānə́ pə kābə́l ke wósi پښتانه په کابل کښې اوسي, "The Pashtuns live in Kabul." [3] The oblique has a sure mark in the plural. Every oblique plural in Tegey and Robson's boxes ends in -o. Bellew says all nouns "invariably inflect the oblique cases of the plural" with o or u, and Raverty that the oblique plural of every noun except those of his ninth declension replaces the last letter of the plural with that sound. [1–3] The singular changes only in some classes. Bellew's rule was that masculines ending in a consonant are "incapable of inflection in the singular", masculines in ay change it to i, and feminines in -a change it to -e. [2] Raverty's example is the word for man: sarraey سړی, oblique sarri, plural sarri, oblique plural sarro. [1]

The vocative is the case of address. David says that in masculine nouns its singular ends in -a, unless the direct form ends in -u, -i or -ā, when it stays as it is. For feminines it is usually the oblique form, with exceptions among kinship words, and the plural is the oblique plural. [4] David's examples:

سړیه، ودرېږه!

saṛ-ay-a wə́-dar-eg-a

"Man, stop!"

پلوشې، ودرېږه!

palwaṣ̌-e wə́-dar-eg-a

"Palwasha, stop!" [4]

Tegey and Robson's list includes ay ghwā اي غوا, "You cow!", ay nikə́ اي نیکه, "Grandfather!", ay māmāgā́no اي ماماګانو, "Uncles!" and ay xə́dzo اي ښځو, "Women!", with aláka هلکه, "boy!", and móre موري, "mother!". [3] Bellew gave the same rules for people in 1867: a masculine adds -a, plara "oh father" and sartya "oh man", and a feminine ending in a consonant adds a short vowel. [2] Raverty's example is a line of Rahman Baba, "Oh Rahman, first learn the song of the nightingales!", where the poet addresses himself and the name carries the vocative mark. [1]

The ablative is where the grammars part. David counts it as a case: the form after la له, "from", tar, and pa when it means "by means of". For masculines it is almost always the same as the vocative, and for feminines usually the same as the oblique. Because few forms differ, she says, some grammars, Tegey and Robson's among them, do not recognise it. [4] Her example is lə plā́r-a rā́ghləy yəm له پلاره راغلئ يم, "I have come from father." [4] Raverty and Bellew each give an ablative after la or da with na. [1, 2]

What the oblique does

The oblique is used for the object of an adposition and for the agent of a past transitive verb. Tegey and Robson state both in one sentence: the oblique forms are used as objects of prepositions and "in subjects of past tense transitive sentences". [3] David lists the adpositions that take it: the postpositions ta ته, "to", and sara سره, "with"; the prepositions da د, "of", and pa په; any circumposition made of one of those prepositions and a postposition; and the circumposition la … na له … نه, "from". [4]

The preposition da does the work of the genitive: David's də zalmí kitā́b د زلمي کتاب, "Zalmay's book", puts the name in the oblique. [4] Tegey and Robson have the same da before the word for the people: de paxtānə́ zoy pə kābə́l ke wósi د پښتانه زوی په کابل کښې اوسي, "The Pashtun's son lives in Kabul." [3] The postposition ta takes the oblique of what it points to: Ahmad ta kitāb wə́rkəṛa احمد ته کتاب ورکړه, "Give the book to Ahmad." [4] A circumposition wraps the noun, with the oblique inside: zmā noṭuna pə kitābč-e ke di زما نوټونه په کتابچې کې دي, "My notes are in the notebook", where the feminine noun shows the case in its -e. [4] David adds that Lutz Rzehak, in a personal communication, suggested the direct case may be becoming usual after some adpositions, and the oblique may sound dated to some speakers. [4]

The agent is the other place. Raverty put it in 1867: before a transitive verb in the past tenses the noun denoting the "agent" "takes the oblique form both singular and plural, if capable of inflection", and a noun with no oblique stays as it is. His pair is sarri khadza'h wu-wāhala'h, "the man struck the woman", and khadzey sarraey wu-wāhah, "the woman struck the man", in which the verb agrees with the object. [1] Bellew gave a similar pair, with Hindustani sentences using ne beside them. [2] Tegey and Robson's is paxtānə́ topák rāwə́ṛ پښتانه توپک راوړ, "The Pashtun brought the rifle", with paxtānə́ in the oblique. [3] David sets present against past: zə ḍer xwandawar tutān xorə́m زه ډېر خوندور توتان خورم, "I am eating a lot of tasty mulberries", and mā ḍer xwandawar tutān wəxóṛəl ما ډېر خوندور توتان وخوړل, "I ate a lot of tasty mulberries." The second verb agrees with "mulberries", not with the speaker. [4] The verb's side of it is in the alphabet and grammar.

Adjectives follow the noun

Adjectives come before their nouns and agree with them: loy khān لوی خان, "an important khan", and pindzə xkwə́le péghle پنځه ښکلې پېغلې, "five pretty girls". [3] One adjective has masculine and feminine forms where a noun has one gender: wə́gay alák وږی هلک, "hungry boy", and wə́ge péghla وږې پېغله, "hungry girl". [3] Tegey and Robson cut the adjectives to four classes from the six of their earlier teaching books:

• Adj 1: consonant-final, like M2 and F1. The oblique plural ends in -o, and the feminine adds -a, with -e in the plural and oblique. ṭit تیت, "scattered". [3]

• Adj 2: masculine in -ay. With stress before the end, tā́gay تږی, "thirsty", has the plural and oblique tā́gi تږي, the oblique plural tā́go تږو, and the feminine tā́ge تږې. With final stress, naráy نری, "thin", goes like M3 and F2 nouns. Many are participles. [3]

• Adj 3: consonant-final, with stressed -ə and -o in the plural. It holds xə ښه, "good", and a large group whose stem vowel changes, as wōṛ وړ, "small", feminine wāṛə́ واړه. [3]

• Adj 4: ending in a stressed vowel, with one form throughout: xāystá ښایسته, "pretty", and many words from Arabic and Persian, such as islāmí اسلامي, "Islamic". [3]

A few resist the classes: sur سور, "red", with the stem sr- in its other forms; shin شین, "green, blue", stem shn-; khog خوږ, "sweet", stem khwāg- or khwag-; and tod تود, "warm", stem tāwd-. [3] The numbers are adjectives with one form each, except yaw یو, "one", which has a feminine yawá. [3]

The agreement runs through the cases. In Tegey and Robson's paradigm the adjective is oblique with the noun: de tā́gi alák khwla wā́cha wa د تږي هلک خوله وچه وه, "The thirsty boy's mouth was dry." With a feminine plural, adjective and verb follow: de tā́go alakā́no khwle wā́che we د تږو هلکانو خولې وچې وي, "The thirsty boys' mouths were dry." [3] Predicate adjectives agree with their subjects and are always direct, since they occur in intransitive sentences. [3] In the vocative the adjective takes oblique endings, with the masculine singular adding -a, except for wə́gay, whose masculine vocative ends in -e in the central dialect: wə́gye aláka وږیې هلکه, "hungry boy!" [3]

Irregular words and loans

Tegey and Robson say that irregular nouns vary from dialect to dialect, from speaker to speaker and in the same speaker over time, and that they tend to become regular. A noun ending in a consonant tends to be masculine (M1 if living, M2 if not), one in an unstressed vowel F1, and one in a stressed vowel M4 or F3. [3] As "horse" is M2 in the central dialect, though living things are usually M1, and in the Kandahar dialect it takes both M2 and M1 endings. [3]

Loanwords are placed by their shape. Tegey and Robson say a borrowed noun gets a gender and class from its form and ignores the gender it had in the donor language: afsə́r افسر, "officer", and dākṭə́r ډاکټر, "doctor", become M1. [3] David's example is motar "car", which speakers decline as masculine with the plural motarūna, as feminine with motáre (as in Urdu), or in a third class with a bare plural. [4]