AN-STEMS

nouns: AN-STEMS

An-stems are either masculine or neutral. The masculine ones are very common, but there are only a handful neutral an-stems. The masculine ones are inflected like this:

sing. plur.
nom. gum-i nom. gum-ar, gum-a*
gen. gum-a gen. gum-a, gum-na**
dat. gum-a dat. gum-um
acc. gum-a acc. gum-a
* -a is the "real" n-stem ending (-ar is borrowed from the a-stems), but it's very rare.
** -na is found only in poetry (where the /n/ can be found in all plural forms of some words (i.a. gumnar))

like gumi:
· bani 'killer'
· máni 'moon'
· oxi 'ox'
· gumi 'man' (a poetic word)
· bogi 'bow'
· félagi 'partner'
· bardagi 'battle'
· ''

The neutral an-stems only differ in the nominative and accusative. They both end with -a in the singular and -u in the plural.

sing.

plur.

like hjarta:

· hjarta 'heart'
· auga 'eye'

nom., acc.

hjart-a

nom., acc.

hjört-u
OSw. hjært-un

There are some masculine van-stems but they are quite rare, and they only differ from the pure an-stems in having a /v/ in front of all endings beginning with /a/ and /i/, but since that /v/ also is appearant in the nominative singular one hardly has to be reminded of this.	:
	· vöðvi 'muscle'

There are also some masculine jan-stems. Ja-stems only differ from the pure a-stems in having a /j/ in front of all endings beginning with /a/ and /u/. The plural genitive ending thus is -ja in stead of -a.	:
	· höfðingi 'chief' · ''

The an-stems have their origin in proto-indo-european n-stems. The endings in the singular all disappeared, and eventually also the /n/ of the suffix. The old plur. nom. ending is -a, but usually the a-stem ending -ar is used.
The /a/ that occurs in most endings can cause a-umlaut of /u/.
The endings: sing: nom: -ê[?] < -ê < -ên ; gen: ; dat: ; acc: -an < -anun < -onm
plur: nom: =a-stem or -an < -aniz < -ones ; gen: =a-stem or -anô < -anôn < -onôm ; dat: -umR < -omiz < -onmes ; acc: -an < proto-germanic -ans < -anuns < i-e. -onns
For the neutral an-stems: sing: nom/acc: -an < -anun < -onm
plur: nom/acc: