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Grammar

Conjugations — 3

Indicative Present (negative) Singular Plural  1st Person  Hanv nam  I am not  Ami nanv We are not  2nd Person  Tum nai Thou art not  Tumi nant You are not  3rd Person  To na, ti na, tem na He/she/it is not  Te nant, teô nant, tim nant   They are not   Simple Past (negative) The past negatives … Continue reading »

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Declensions of Pronouns – 6

Finally, we come to the very important inflections or, in a way, the roots of all inflections, the flex stems. Some grammarians call them crude forms, others call them just stems; and stems they indeed are. And since they are the very stems of all inflections, it would be more appropriate to call them inflection stems or, to be more succint, … Continue reading »

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Declensions of Pronouns – 5

In most languages the locatives are expressed through prepositions. Such is certainly the case in European languages and even Latin which has declensions but has no special cases in her declensions to denote location. In Konkani there are two locative cases: locative on and locative in. All the other types of locations, such as under, … Continue reading »

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Declensions of Pronouns – 4

The ablative case in Konkani is actually a compounded case. It is the genitive instrumental, or the  instrumental of the genitive case, and its usage is very restricted and yet not uncommon, and hence its importance. It is used mainly to express a person’s ability or inability, competence or incompetence, etc or the legitimacy or … Continue reading »

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Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

If you want to be certain whether a particular English verb is transitive or intransitive, you may sometimes have to indulge in some juggling with words and sentences. You may have to ask yourself questions ending with ‘what’ or ‘whom’ and even then, given the flexibility of the English language, you may not arrive at a surefire answer. Another way to find that out is to … Continue reading »

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Declensions of Pronouns – 3

You must have noticed that I have been repeatedly referring to the instrumental case, which is perhaps a peculiarity of all, or at least most, Indian sanskritic languages.  In European languages, for example, and even in the ancient ones like Latin, there is no such thing as an instrumental case. But native speakers of Hindi, … Continue reading »

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Declensions of Pronouns – 2

In most languages, the direct object of a transitive verb takes the accusative case. In some languages the noun or pronoun that follows a preposition may also have to be in the accusative. The latter, though, isn’t the case with Konkani. (Of course, in the first place, Konkani doesn’t even have prepositions: she has postpositions instead; … Continue reading »

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Plurals of Nouns – 3

You are probably aware that the neuter gender is not only used for things and animals but for human persons as well. It is used when addressing young girls, one’s sisters or cousins who are more or less of the same age or younger, and in some parts of Goa it is even used for … Continue reading »

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Plurals of Nouns – 2

Just as the most typical masculine nouns are those that end in o, the most typical feminine nouns are those ending in i. But in the case of these nouns, the manner in which they change from their singular to their plurals depends on one peculiar property of theirs: whether they have a single or a double … Continue reading »

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Plurals of Nouns – 1

Since we are going to deal with the plurals of nouns, which are obviously in the nominative case, this grammar topic is actually a subset of Declensions. Konkani  nouns in our vocabulary list are going to include four principal parts: the nominative singular, singular flex stem, nominative plural and the plural flex stem. In this … Continue reading »

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