UNYT ONE
    
     The Chuvash noun; gender; plural.
    
    The Chuvash Noun
    
     As we have seen in the preceding, a Chuvash noun or nominal may be used in different functions, that is, at the same time belong to several subclasses, as adjective, adverb, and so on. Let us begin by learning some Chuvash nominals, which, like all illustrative vocabulary items, the student should memorize and review as necessary.
    
    

tinĕş		sea
atte		father
pichche		brother
yvăl		son
văkăr		bull
taka		ram
chăvash		Chuvash
epir		we
pürt		house
ikkĕ		two
anne		mother
akka		sister
hĕr		girl, daughter
arăm		woman, lady
ĕne		cow
lasha		horse
etem		man, mankind
kartă		map

    As one can see, these few words include many kinds of objects, persons, animals, things. Yn fact, just because nominals denote persons or places does not place them in any special subclass, for instance
    

Atăl		Volga
chăvash		Chuvash
Kavkaz	Caucasus
Shupashkar	Cheboxary
Petĕr		Peter
Mars		Mars
uyăx		moon, Moon
oktyabr‘	October
husan		Kazan
Yvan		Yvan, John

    Later, we shall find it convenient to put into subclasses such collections of forms as pronominals (epĕ, Y; esĕ, you, etc.), kam who, mĕn what; numerals, adjectives, and others. Although all these are essentially nominals, they have small differences which set them apart from nouns of the sort above.
    
    Gender
     Unlike some European languages, Chuvash does not assign a real or arbitrary gender to its nominals (including pronouns, adjectives, etc.). All such words exist in one unvarying form, a fact which makes the learning of Chuvash easier for the student. The only gender possessed by the word is that inherent in its meaning, if it denotes a specific kind of male or female being. No particular changes or endings are required because of the gender of any word in the sentence. Thus the question of gender is really nonexistent.
     Yf it is necessary to denote a male being as opposed to a female being, morphemes like aşa ‘male‘ or ama ‘female‘ are added, for animals, and for humans, words like ar ‘man‘ or hĕr ‘girl.‘
    
     ar man, male arăm woman
    aşa sysna boar ama sysna sow
    aşa hur gander ama hur goose
    văkăr bull ĕne cow
    
    
     yvă1 acha son, ‘boy-child‘
     xĕracha daughter, ‘girl-child‘
     arşin (< ar + şyn) man, male person
     patsha king, czar
     xĕrarăm patsha queen, princess (‘lady-king‘)
    
    Terms of relationship have inherent gender, as do some animal names.
    
     atte father anne mother
     pichche brother akka sister
    
    
    Plural
    
     Yn contrast to some other languages in which there are a number of ways to form the plural, and which cannot be predicted but must be learned, Chuvash has only one way to form the plural, which is good for all nominals at all times and places. What is more, the plural is little used in those places where the student might expect. Chuvash once had many plural forms, and a discussion of them may be found elsewhere (0. Pritsak, “Tschuwassische Pluralsuffixe,“ Studia Altaica, Wiesbaden, 1957, pp. 137-155).
     The singular number in Chuvash means not only one item from that class, it also means the entire class of that item. The plural is used only for denoting a collection of individual items from the class. Chuvash never expresses the plural in general statements (as “Children are a joy; flowers are beautiful; applies are good to eat,“ etc.). The sense for the plural is highly developed in English and European languages, so that we feel that to say “ten man, three mouse, two door“ is quite impossible, and only in a few expressions of measure do we find “a two-man raft, a ten-foot pole, a Live mile trip.“ Yn Chuvash, however, the plural is never, or at least rarely, used after a numeral, or quantity word hence:
    
     şirĕm sĕtel twenty table twenty tables
     numay şyn many man many a man, many people
     pi1ĕk pürt five house five houses
    
    The presence of the number or quantity word is sufficient to indicate plurality to a Chuvash speaker.
     The plural in Chuvash is mostly used to indicate the presence of a number of items in the class of things denoted by the word involved, but not the entire class itself. The plural morpheme in Chuvash is /-sem/, and it is added directly to the preceding morpheme.
    
     ulma apple
     ulmisem ‘their different apples‘ (actually a possessive here, but the prin
     ciple is unchanged), that is, those apples which each person has in
     his or her hand just now, but not apples in general
     vută firewood, kindling
     vuttisem the pieces of firewood, taken as individual objects, not as a whole
     (also possessive)
     şem‘ye family
     şem‘yisem the members of one‘s family
     pürt house, hut
     pürtsem houses, a number of individual houses somewhere, but not
     houses as a class
     shuhăshsem thoughts (on different subjects)
     Yvanovsem the Yvanoffs, members of the Yvanoff family
     kaha1sem the lazybones‘ and his family (folktales) (208,5)
    
    As in English and some other languages, some Chuvash words do not have logical plurals (the so-called ‘mass nouns,‘ like water, milk, love), or are but rarely used in plural form.
    
     telei happiness
     shyv water
     shyvsem waters (of the earth), rivers and lakes
    
     Yn Russian, a few words of foreign origin ending in a vowel do not take any declensional endings. When these words occur as loanwords into Chuvash, however, they become subject to Chuvash plurals and endings.
    
     pal"to overcoat pal‘tosem overcoats
     kenguru kangaroo kengurusem kangaroos
    
     Two features, which both anticipate later discussion, will be briefly mentioned here. As mentioned, nearly all inflectional morphemes in Chuvash have two forms, one used with front vowels /e, ĕ‚ i, ü/ and one used with back vowels /a, ă‚ i, y, u/. This pervades the entire Chuvash language, and is also characteristic of other Altaic languages as well. The Chuvash plural morpheme /-sem/ does not observe this difference in the formal written language. The spoken dialects (especially of the northern region) do employ [sam] with back vowel words, and [sem] with front vowel words.
     The plural morpheme in Chuvash is placed after any other preceding suffixes, as possessive morphemes (to be learned later), whereas in all other Turkic languages, the plural morpheme follows the root morpheme, and then any possessive or other morphemes are added.