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, just flex stems as I like to call them.

Hindi flex stems are very elementary, those of Marathi are much more developed, but pardon me for the feeling that the flex stems of Konkani, or at least of the Konkani I speak, are even more defined and refined! And I see that Konkani has a very rich grammar. However, due to the fact that, in her recent history, she has suffered from neglect and disfavour, she is unfortunately lagging behind in her vocabulary. Yet that should not prompt people to just pluck words from Marathi and Sanskrit and spray them freely and raw into Konkani texts, for that would be the surest way to kill Amchi Bhas.

The importance of flex stems lies in the fact that they are indispensable when using postpositions. In this connection, let me repeat here once again that in Konkani there are no prepositions; instead, we have postpositions. The same, in fact, is the case with most, or perhaps all, Sanskritic languages. Such an inversion is a part of the Indian style. For instance, “Auntie Catherine” sounds perfect in English, but if you want to say that in Konkani, you don’t say, “Mavxi Catherine” but “Kotrin Mavxi“.

Notice also that we don’t say, “zhadd pondak“. Zhadd is a nominative and it cannot be used as such with a postposition. It has to be transformed into its flex stem, and the flex stem of the singular of zhadd is zhadda. Hence: zhadda pondak. It is the same with pronouns as well: when they are used with (and before) postpositions, they have to be transformed into their flex stems. Here are the flex stems of all the pronouns:

Example:
To tichê koddê uloita

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, below, beside, etc.,  are expressed through postpositions.

Actually, although Konkani nouns have both locative ONs and locative INs, such is not the case with prepositions. Prepositions have locative ONs for all three persons and both numbers, but locative IN exists only for inanimate objects in the third person, and it is common to both singular and plural. That locative IN is tantun

In contrast, all pronouns have locative ONs. For example, in “Mhojêr ghalum naka“

 
Example:
Soglloch bhar tujêr poddlo 

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 illegitimacy, permissibility or the opposite of a certain behaviour or action. The ablative is used when one wants to convey a meaning similar to सकना in Hindi or शकणे in Marathi.  For example, the Konkani version of मै कर सकता हूं (Hindi) or मी करूं शकतों (Marathi) is “Mhojean korum ieta”

It is interesting to note that Marathi too has a similar ablative case. However, it is perhaps considered as archaic and is mostly found in old writings such as translations of the Bible. For instance, the Marathi form of mhojean is माझ्याने. And unless one is familiar with Marathi literature, one may never have even heard the word माझ्याने, which is the ablative of मी.

Here are the ablatives of personal pronouns:

Examples:

Mhojean hem sonsum nozo

Tujean tem kam’ oxem korum ieta 

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 try to put the sentence into the passive voice because as a rule if you can manage to do that and get the object of the main sentence to end up as the subject of the sentence in the passive voice, then the particular verb is almost certainly a transitive verb.

For instance, if you want to be sure whether the verb solved in the sentence, “I  solved the problem”, is used transitively or intransitively, you ask the question, “solved what?”, and since you do get an answer, i.e., ‘problem’, you could safely conclude that solved is indeed a transitive verb. Besides, it is also easy to put it into the passive voice thus: “The problem was solved by me”. Here, the object of the sentence, viz., ‘problem’, becomes the subject of the second sentence and so you can say for certain that ‘solved’ is a transitive verb.

But then English is English, and transposing a sentence into the passive voice can land one into some ambiguity. For instance, how would you put the following sentence into the passive voice: ‘He gave me the book’? You could say, “The book was given to me by him”, and that would be correct. But couldn’t you also say, “I was given the book by him”? And in that case, would ‘me’ have been the object of ‘gave’ just because you managed to get it transformed into the subject in the passive voice?

In Konkani, on the other hand, there is a fundamental difference between transitive and intransitive verbs, and there can never ever be any such ambiguity. For a student of Konkani it is crucial to know whether a verb is transitive or intransitive. And perhaps that isn’t all that difficult. For while in English the same verb can be either transitive or intransitive depending on the context, that doesn’t happen in Konkani. If you browse through any English dictionary you will find that the majority of verbs can be used both transitively and intransitively. Take, for instance, a simple verb like, ‘break’. When you say, “the bottle broke”, you are using the verb intransitively, for there is no answer to the question, “broke what?”.  But if you say, “I broke the bottle”, you are using the same verb transitively. “You broke what?” Answer: the bottle.

Now let us take the Konkani word for the same verb ‘break’.  If you want to say, “The bottle broke”, you would use the word futtonk 

So in Konkani, unlike English, no verb can be used either transitively or intransitively: it is in essence either the one or the other. Sometimes there may appear to be some ambiguity here, but actually there isn’t. Take, for instance, the Konkani word for open.  In English we can use it transtively, e.g., “He opens the window”,  or intransitively as in, “The window doesn’t open”.  In Konkani too there may seem to be just one word for both, i.e., ugddunk,

And even apart from that, there is one sure way to determine whether a verb is transitive or intransitive. Just make a sentence with that verb in the simple past tense. Does the subject take the instrumental case? If so, it is a transitive verb, else it is intransitive. As an example let us see the difference between somponk 

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, Marathi and Konkani, for example, use the instrumental without being aware of it. And its most frequent use is seen in the past tense of transitive verbs. Since most of you are probably familiar with Hindi, let me take some simple examples of its use in Hindi:

English:  I always work                       Hindi: मै हमेशा काम करता हूं।

English: I worked yesterday              Hindi:  मैने कल काम किया।

Note that the मै changes to मैने which is the instrumental form of मै.

Exactly the same transformation takes place in both Marathi and Konkani when a transitive verb takes the past tense: the subject then takes the instrumental case. It is true that in Mumbai, for instance, we often hear sentences like मै काम किया. But that is obviously wrong Hindi.

Here are the instrumental cases of personal pronouns:

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; and in Konkani the postpositions require the previous word to be a flex stem rather than an independent case.  I shall deal with this later.)

However, in Konkani the accusative (direct animate object) and the dative (indirect object) are identical in form.  E.g., mhaka  

I have said above that animate accusative has the same form as the dative.  That needs to be further elaborated. When the direct object of a sentence is animate (human or an animal or an inanimate object that we want to personify), we use the dative form, while if the direct object is inanimate, we use the nominative form.

Examples: Hanv tika (dative form) ghorant haddtam  

The above illustrated difference in treatement between animate and inanimate objects applies not just to pronouns but to nouns as well. However, in the case of pronouns, since the first and second persons are always considered as animate — and even if they are inanimate, they are ipso facto personified — when they are used as direct objects they always take the dative form. The differential treatment therefore applies only to the third person, singular and plural.

Here are the datives/animate accusatives of personal pronouns:

Note:

1.  In the above table, the word thee (although it is archaic) is used, instead of you, just to indicate that it is the singular you.

2.  Distinctions between he, she and it are not the same as in English. In Konkani, on the one hand, even inanimate objects can be masculine, feminine or neuter, while on the other, the neuter can refer to humans as well, i.e., little girls and sometimes even adult women (though not to boys or men). Hence the genders of Konkani words are to be learned along with the words themselves, as a part of the vocabulary.

3. In connection with one of the examples above, I would like to note that, just as in English we distinguish between a house and a home, a similar difference also exists between ghor  

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 in-laws. But if you are not sure, it is safer not to use the neuter when referring to, or addressing, grown up ladies, irrespective of their age. In many families in Goa, the neuter is never used for any of one’s in-laws or the in-laws of one’s neighbours or relatives. Instead, the feminine is used as an expression of respect to the lady. In fact, some high class families of Goa don’t use the neuter even when referring to their little girls, and expect others to follow the same custom. I intend to treat this topic in a little more detail at the appropriate time.

With regard to the first and second persons, singular and plural, the conjugation of verbs do vary according to the gender, the pronoun itself does not change, just as in English. But when it comes to the third person, the pronoun changes according to the gender, again just like in English. That is, the words I, you and we remain constant whether the party concerned is masculine, feminine or neuter. But when it comes to the third person, the English speaker specifies whether it is a he, a she or an it, though in the plural, it is always they, whether they are hes, shes or its. In Konkani, the practice is very similar with regard to the singular, with to 

But nouns, unlike pronouns, have their own sweet ways to form their plurals. Here are some rules that apply to neuter nouns:

1. Neuter nouns ending in em form their plurals by changing the em to im.
Examples:  tollem 

2. Neuter nouns ending in im form their plurals by changing the im to iam.
Examples:  tantim 

3.  Neuter nouns which end in um, and have a double consonant preceding the um, form their plurals by changing the um to am.
Examples: mhosrum

4. Neuter nouns which end in um, and have a single consonant preceding the um, form their plurals by changing the um to vam.
Examples: gorum 

Note: You will notice in three of the above examples, the plural also gets a circumflex on one of the preceding vowels. That is because their last syllables they have lost the u which automatically gave a closed effect to the preceding e or o. That e or o still stays closed, but there is nothing to indicate that, and hence the need of an external aid, the circumflex, to indicate the closed sound that the preceding vowel already had. For example, in the word gorum, the u being a closed vowel automatically “closes” the previous vowel, o. But in the plural, gôrvam, the a is an open vowel while the o in the first syllable continues to be closed, and hence the necessity of the circumflex.

5. Some neuter nouns, ending in a consonant, form their plurals by adding am.
Example: zhadd 

6. Other neuter nouns, ending in a consonant, form their plurals by first dropping their last vowels and then adding am.
Examples: lankudd 

If you are in the process of learning the language you may find it hard to master the rules governing the plural formation of nouns, whether they are masculine, feminine or neuter. My advice to you is that you need not bother about all these transformations of words. Instead,  as I have mentioned elsewhere, when you start building your vocabulary of nouns, you should learn all the four principal parts of the noun in one go, in the following order: 1) the (nominative) singular, 2) the singular flex stem, 3) the (nominative) plural, and 4) the plural flex stem.  For example if you want the Konkani word for jack fruit, instead of just picking up the word ponnôs, try to take in all the four principal parts. So the Konkani for jack fruit is ponnôs, ponnsa, ponnos, ponnsam.

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 consonant before that i. By single or double consonant I am not referring to the number of consonant letters but the number of consonant sounds. For example, the dd in koddi 

1. Feminine nouns which end in i, and have a single consonant before the i, form their (nominative) plurals by changing the i to iô. 
Examples: boddi 

2. Feminine nouns ending in i, and having a double consonant before that i, form their plurals by changing the i into eô.
     Examples: sotri 

 Note:  An m or n that nasalizes the preceding vowel (and hence takes the place of an anuswara), is not considered as a vowel. Thus panthi 

3. Some feminine nouns, ending in a consonant, form their plurals by taking on an extra vowel ô.
Examples: sangh

4. Other feminine vowels, ending in a consonant, form their plurals by adding an i instead.
 Examples: kidd 

Note:  There is unfortunately no rule to tell us which feminine nouns should take an i and which should take an ô to form their plurals. Also, in some of these cases, the noun may drop its last vowel before taking the new ending to form the plural and there is no general rule that covers that either. For example: the plural of rampônn is rampnni. That has to be learnt as a part of the vocabulary. For instance, it might interest you to know that the word chinch 

5. Feminine nouns ending in a remain unchanged in the plural. Examples: pidda