Languages like Latin and Greek use declensions to identify a noun’s grammatical function in a sentence. The first declension is a set of suffixes that identifies a noun’s function, with specific suffixes for each grammatical case. Each language has a different number of declensions, and nouns are grouped into declensions based on their characteristics. The first declension often consists of words ending in “a” and has separate sets of suffixes for singular and plural nouns, and sometimes for masculine and feminine nouns.
In the English language, the grammatical function that a particular noun performs in a sentence is dictated by its position. If a person were to read the sentence “The cat climbs the tree,” he should know that the cat is the subject and the tree is the direct object, based on the order in the sentence. Languages like Latin and Greek, however, use a system of declensions to identify the grammatical function a noun performs in a sentence. In both of these languages, a first declension is a set of word suffixes that identifies what grammatical function a particular noun – usually of the feminine gender – performs in a sentence.
In languages that use a system of declensions, each noun uses a specific set of endings. With these suffixes – which emit an ending for each grammatical purpose, or case, the word can serve in a sentence – they are called declensions. Every word in a language uses one of these declensions, and each is identified by an ordinal number. The number of declensions used by a language can vary. Students studying these languages have to memorize every suffix that belongs to each declension.
The nouns belong to different declensions based on the characteristics of the word itself. Words that belong to the first declension in languages like Latin or Greek tend to end in an “a” sound. These words are mostly nouns of feminine gender or masculine words ending with an “a” sound.
The first declension, as with the others, typically consists of a specific suffix for each grammatical case that the noun can assume within a sentence. These cases include:
accusative – used to show that the noun is the direct object in the sentence
dative – where the noun is the indirect object in the sentence
nominative – indicates that the noun is the subject of a sentence
ablative: indicates that the noun is the object of a preposition pre
genitive: conveys a noun that is the owner of a particular object
There is one set of suffixes for each case of singular nouns, and a different set for each case of plural nouns, in each declension. The first declension may have separate sets of suffixes for words in the declension that are grammatically masculine or grammatically feminine, depending on the language. In Latin, both masculine and feminine grammatical gender nouns use the same suffixes, while in Greek there are separate declensions for each.
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