Parts of speech
Most of the words listed in the online dictionary are nouns and verbs.Nouns
Nouns in Nuer differ in their form according to number (singular and plural) and case (nominative, genitive and locative).
Find out more about Nuer nouns.
Verbs
Verbs in Nuer differ in their form according to the person (first, second, third) and number (singular and plural) of their subject.
Two major classes of verb are distinguished in the dictionary:
- Intransitive verbs (in. verb) have one argument, a subject.
- Transitive verbs (tr. verb) have a subject and an object.
We also distinguish some subclasses:
- Adjectival verbs (adj. verb) are a type of intransitive verb, so they only have one argument, a subject. These verbs often corrsepond to adjectives in languages like English.
Find out more about Nuer verbs.
Other parts of speech
The other parts of speech in the dictionary are:
- Adverbs (adverb): a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, another adverb or a word group (e.g. quickly, very, etc.).
- Prepositions (prep): a word that usually precedes a noun or pronoun that expresses a relation to another word or element in the clause (e.g. on, in, with, etc.).
- Pronouns (pronoun): a word that can function as a noun phrase used by itself and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g. I, you ) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse (e.g. she, it, this, etc.).