Macedonian Noun Templates

I have finished entering the most important adjectives, with the appropriate declension tables, and would like to add declension tables to nouns as well now. However, the existing declension templates are not very satisfactory, first of all because of the way they look. They appear to include a table poorly fitted within another table. See what I mean at ѕвезда. Could you make them look nicer and preferably more similar to the verb templates you already made some weeks ago? Furthermore, all noun templates are missing vocative forms, except the { { mk-infl } } template, which is however only basic and doesn't include any suffixes in it. By the way, that one actually looks quite nice, unlike all the remaining specific ones. If you could implement it into the others, that would be great, though I don't know if we would have a problem with it not matching the verb conjugation tables in terms of design afterwards (it is actually very similar to the verb table, except that it's darker). Anyway, the noun declension templates are also too few. For example, there is no declension table for neuter "-e" nouns. Meanwhile, there is a declension table for feminine nouns ending in "-a" but not the ones ending in consonants. Here is an excel file with all the noun declension types that we would need as templates, so you can see how to make the templates: https://www.dropbox.com/s/46pqad40fynjybb/Macedonian%20Nouns.xls

P.S. The "p1", "p2", and "p3" refer to the parameters in sequential order. P.P.S. Could you make two versions of each template, one for countable and for uncountable nouns, so that we can avoid nonsensical illogical plural forms being produced?

Could you make the background of your spreadsheet white instead of black? I can't read it the way it is now. I have to select the text to make it visible (the verb spreadsheet you gave me before had the same problem). Alternatively you could make a wikitext table and post it on Wiktionary somewhere, maybe your user page?

For countable and uncountable nouns the same principle applies as for imperfective and perfective verbs; it's better to add a parameter for this rather than make two versions of every template. The Slovene noun templates have a n= parameter, which can be n=sg, n=du or n=pl. This way, templates can be used for countable, uncountable and also for plural-only nouns. Macedonian has no dual but it would work the same.

The background of the spreadsheet isn't black at all - it's white. I don't why it shows up like that on the link, but if you download the file rather than viewing it online, it will display as it should.

If the parameter can work that way, alright - I didn't know whether it was possible for a parameter to remove an entire column of a table.

Templates just generate output, and using things like {{#if: you can output things based on some condition. So yes, that would make it very much possible to omit parts of a table. However, in this case, omitting columns is rather cumbersome and makes the template very complex, so I think I'll just make two tables: one with two columns and one with just a single column. The two-column table would be used by default, but if n= is given, it switches to the single-column table.

From what I see in the table, the declension of Macedonian is not so different from Slovene or Russian, except that of course there are no cases. Those languages also have the difference between -o and -e endings, which are called "hard" and "soft". However, in those languages, it's entirely predictable whether "-o" or "-e" should be used, it depends only on the final consonant of the stem. If it's a soft consonant, it's "-e", otherwise "-o". Does this also apply to Macedonian? If so, then those two types of noun could probably be unified into a single type. The template would need to be created in Lua though, so that it can check the final consonant.

I do wonder if that your table may be incomplete. In other Slavic languages, the noun morje / more is a normal neuter noun, with the plural in -a (morja / mora). It has the -e ending in the singular because it ends in a soft consonant (j). I would expect the Macedonian forms to be similar, мора, but according to your tables, all neuter nouns with -е have a plural in -иња, so it would be мориња. Is this correct?

I don't really understand which "-e" and "-o" endings you are referring to. Are you talking about the feminine vocative forms? In that case, it's not about the last consonant being soft or hard. The rule is that feminine "-a" nouns have a vocative form in "-o", unless they end in "-ка" or "-ица" (as suffixes) and contain three or more syllables, in which case they have a vocative form in "-e". If you can make Lua work with that, all right, but otherwise, I'm fine with just dealing with this manually (i.e. choosing the "-o" vs. "-e" vocative template for each feminine "-a" noun).

By the way, the Macedonian vocative forms don't really follow the same rules as other Slavic languages. For example, in BCS, for masculine nouns, the ending is "-u" if the final consonant is palatal or "-e" if it's hard. In Macedonian, it's somewhat random and most masculine nouns simply have "-у" whereas the ones that do have "-e" can very often have "-у" too.

Yes, the table is somewhat incomplete. "море" does indeed become "мориња", but "јајце" becomes "јајца" (although "јајциња" is sometimes heard too). Furthermore, all neuter "-e" nouns that end in "-ие" "-ње" (the gerund suffix), or "-је" (the collective suffix) have plurals in "-a". My table is also incomplete in that it doesn't include anything for irregular nouns such as "камен", "рака", "нога", "дете" or "око". Also, it doesn't account for the intrusive "j" that appears and disappears (I believe you understand under what circumstances this happens), e.g. "боја" > "бои" (loss) and "искушение" > "искушенија" (appearance).

I see, so it's not really the same at all. In that case I'll just make separate templates then. Which is more common, the -е/иња type or the -е/а type?

Are there any nouns which have a gender that does not match what you would expect from the last consonant? Slovene has some masculine nouns ending in -o and -a, I believe Russian does as well.

The "-e" > "-иња" type is more common than the "-e" > "-a" type, I believe.

Yes, there are nouns whose gender doesn't match what you would expect from the last consonant, such as the feminine nouns ending in a consonant that I have represented in my table. There are indeed masculine nouns in "-o" and "-a" as well. The ones in "-o" are problematic, because in the singular, they take the neuter suffixes (e.g. "татко" > "таткото", "татконо", etc.) whereas in the plural, they have the "-oвци" suffix (e.g. "татко" > "татковци", "татковците", etc.). The ones in "-a", however, can simply use the template for regular feminine "-a" nouns.

That's a bit unexpected. Etymologically, the definite article is a separate word, so just like you have in Spanish la mano (feminine word that looks masculine), I would have expected that feminine or neuter-looking words would still take the masculine definite article. But I guess that the Macedonian articles are no longer "felt" as separate words with their own gender anymore, but simply endings that must match the noun in some kind of pattern.

I think for these exceptional nouns we would need separate templates, because of the irregularities you mentioned.

I've created some templates in Category:Macedonian noun inflection-table templates. I also renamed the old {{mk-infl}} to {{mk-decl-noun-manual}}. It's probably best not to use that template unless it's really needed. I think this should cover most nouns for now?

Yes, the article matches the noun's final vowel rather than the gender or number. Thus, "луѓе", which is plural, takes neuter singular suffixes. If you think we need separate templates, fine.

Anyway, I don't know how to use the masculine noun template. When I put the singular stem as the first parameter, the vocative as the second and the plural stem as the third, only the first parameter is used everywhere, so the template produces only wrong tables, as first of all, no masculine noun ending in a consonant has a vocative form identical to the nominative, and second of all, only about a third of masculine nouns simply add "-и" to the singular stem to form the plural. The remaining involve elision, palatalization or the suffix "-ови" and "-еви". That's why for masculine nouns, I'd need to enter three different things. Could you explain to me how to this? Also, have you accounted for the feminine nouns with the "-е" vocative within the code of the template for those with the "-o" vocative?