Aramaic

===Nouns and adjectives===
Aramaic nouns and adjectives are inflected to show ''gender'', ''number'' and ''state''.

Aramaic has two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. The feminine absolute singular is often marked by the ending ה- ''-â''.

Nouns can be either singular or plural, but an additional "dual" number exists for nouns that usually come in pairs. The dual number gradually disappeared from Aramaic over time and has little influence in Middle and Modern Aramaic.

Aramaic nouns and adjectives can exist in one of three states. To a certain extent, these states correspond to the role of articles and cases in the [[Indo-European languages]]:
# The ''absolute'' state is the basic form of a noun. In early forms of Aramaic, the absolute state expresses indefiniteness, comparable to the English indefinite article a(n) (for example, כתבה ''kṯāḇâ'', "'''a''' handwriting"), and can be used in most syntactic roles. However, by the Middle Aramaic period, its use for nouns (but not adjectives) had been widely replaced by the emphatic state.
# The ''[[Status constructus|construct]]'' state is a form of the noun used to make possessive constructions (for example, '''כתבת''' מלכתא '''''kṯāḇat''' malkṯâ'', "the handwriting of the queen"). In the masculine singular, the form of the construct is often the same as the absolute, but it may undergo vowel reduction in longer words. The feminine construct and masculine construct plural are marked by suffixes. Unlike a [[genitive case]], which marks the possessor, the construct state is marked on the possessed. This is mainly due to Aramaic word order: '''possessed[const.] possessor[abs./emph.]''' are treated as a speech unit, with the first unit (possessed) employing the construct state to link it to the following word. In Middle Aramaic, the use of the construct state for all but stock phrases (like בר נשא ''bar nāšâ'', "son of man") begins to disappear.
# The ''emphatic'' or ''determined'' state is an extended form of the noun that functions similarly to the [[Article (grammar)|definite article]]. It is marked with a suffix (for example, כתבת'''א'''  ''kṯāḇtâ'', "'''the''' handwriting"). Although its original grammatical function seems to have been to mark definiteness, it is used already in Imperial Aramaic to mark all important nouns, even if they should be considered technically indefinite. This practice developed to the extent that the absolute state became extraordinarily rare in later varieties of Aramaic.

Whereas other [[Northwest Semitic languages]], like Hebrew, have the absolute and construct states, the emphatic/determined state is a unique feature to Aramaic. [[Inflection|Case endings]], as in [[Ugaritic grammar#Case|Ugaritic]], probably existed in a very early stage of the language, and glimpses of them can be seen in a few compound proper names. However, as most of those cases were expressed by short final vowels, they were never written, and the few characteristic long vowels of the masculine plural accusative and genitive are not clearly evidenced in inscriptions. Often, the [[Object (grammar)|direct object]] is marked by a prefixed -ל ''l-'' (the [[preposition and postposition|preposition]] "to") if it is definite.

Adjectives agree with their nouns in number and gender but agree in state only if used attributively. Predicative adjectives are in the absolute state regardless of the state of their noun (a [[copula (linguistics)|copula]] may or may not be written). Thus, an attributive adjective to an emphatic noun, as in the phrase "the good king", is written also in the emphatic state מלכא טבא ''malkâ ṭāḇâ''{{snd}}king[emph.] good[emph.]. In comparison, the predicative adjective, as in the phrase "the king is good", is written in the absolute state מלכא טב ''malkâ ṭāḇ''{{snd}}king[emph.] good[abs.].

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! "good"
! masc. sg.
! fem. sg.
! masc. pl.
! fem. pl.
|-
! abs.
| rowspan="2" | טב ṭāḇ
| טבה ṭāḇâ
| טבין ṭāḇîn
| טבן ṭāḇān
|-
! const.
| טבת ṭāḇaṯ
| טבי ṭāḇê
| טבת ṭāḇāṯ
|-
! det./emph.
| טבא ṭāḇâ
| טבתא ṭāḇtâ
| טביא ṭāḇayyâ
| טבתא ṭāḇāṯâ
|}

The final א- ''-â'' in a number of these suffixes is written with the letter [[aleph]]. However, some Jewish Aramaic texts employ the letter [[he (letter)|he]] for the feminine absolute singular. Likewise, some Jewish Aramaic texts employ the Hebrew masculine absolute singular suffix ים- ''-îm'' instead of ין- ''-în''. The masculine determined plural suffix, יא- ''-ayyâ'', has an alternative version, ''-ê''. The alternative is sometimes called the "gentilic plural" for its prominent use in ethnonyms (יהודיא ''yəhûḏāyê'', 'the Jews', for example). This alternative plural is written with the letter [[aleph]], and came to be the only plural for nouns and adjectives of this type in Syriac and some other varieties of Aramaic. The masculine construct plural, ''-ê'', is written with [[yodh]]. In Syriac and some other variants this ending is [[diphthong]]ized to ''-ai''.

Possessive phrases in Aramaic can either be made with the construct state or by linking two nouns with the relative particle -[ד[י ''d[î]-''. As the use of the construct state almost disappears from the Middle Aramaic period on, the latter method became the main way of making possessive phrases.

For example, the various forms of possessive phrases (for "the handwriting of the queen") are:
# '''כתבת מלכתא''' '''kṯāḇaṯ malkṯâ''' – the oldest construction, also known as סמיכות səmîḵûṯ : the possessed object (כתבה kṯābâ, "handwriting") is in the construct state (כתבת kṯāḇaṯ); the possessor (מלכה malkâ, "queen") is in the emphatic state (מלכתא malkṯâ)
# '''כתבתא דמלכתא''' '''kṯāḇtâ d(î)-malkṯâ''' – both words are in the emphatic state and the relative particle -[ד[י ''d[î]-'' is used to mark the relationship
# '''כתבתה דמלכתא''' '''kṯāḇtāh d(î)-malkṯâ''' – both words are in the emphatic state, and the relative particle is used, but the possessed is given an anticipatory, pronominal ending (כתבתה kṯāḇtā-h, "handwriting-her"; literally, "her writing, that (of) the queen").
In Modern Aramaic, the last form is by far the most common. In Biblical Aramaic, the last form is virtually absent.