Kashmiri/Nominal Morphology

Gender

Nouns in Kashmiri have gender - masculine or feminine. Most new loanwords are taken as masculine. There are five cases in Kashmiri (nominative/absolutive, ergative, dative, ablative, and vocative). Some temporal nouns have an -i locative ending. Feminine declension is simple and exceptionless. Masculine has two declension patterns - one regular, the other reserved for older nouns. There is extensive vocalic and consonant mutation in both genders.

Feminine

	SG.	PL.
NOM.	koor	kuori
ERG.	kuori	kuoryav
DAT.	kuori	kuoryan
ABL.	kuori	kuoryav

Masculine

Regular

	SG.	PL.
NOM.	bar	bar
ERG.	baran	barav
DAT.	baras	baran
ABL.	barú	barav

Palatalised

	SG.	PL.
NOM.	kul	kulь
ERG.	kulyan	kulyav
DAT.	kulis	kulyan
ABL.	kuli	kulyav

hoon 'dog'

Notice that ergative and ablative plurals are always similar, and that the plural declension is largely the same for all nouns. CyV indicates a palatalised C, and so does ь word-finally. All consonants preceding high front vowels (i, e, ee, and ie) are palatalised in all conditions and hence the palatalisation is not marked.

Ergativity is triggered by the past stem of a verb. Ablative usually denotes movement away from a source.

There are a lot of mutation of sounds in all declensions. For instance, in feminine:

o -> wa tsoŧ 'bread, roti' > tswaci 'bread(pl.), rotis' gob 'heavy (f.)' > gwabi 'heavy (pl.)'

á -> a nár 'arm' > nari 'arms' gár 'watch, clock' > gari 'watches, clocks'

ae -> aa daer 'window' > daari 'windows'

In masculine:

uo > ae muol 'father' > maelь 'fathers'

yu > yi kyul 'nail' > kilь 'nails'

Other nouns:

gagur 'mouse' > gagar 'mice' dramun 'grass' kach 'weed gras' gupun 'donkey' > gupan zoon 'moon' tséndúr 'moon' triesh 'water' aab 'water'

Among common consonant mutations, ŧ changes to c, đ to j, etc.