Nouns in general are words that refer to persons, places, or things. Some randomly-selected examples of English nouns include the words "Listuguj," "Mary," "woman," and "table." These words are also nouns in Mi'gmaq: "Listuguj," "Mali," "epit," and "ptauti."

In some ways, Mi'gmaq nouns resemble English nouns (for instance, you can have singular and plural versions of a noun). In other ways, they differ from English (for instance, there is a feature of nouns that we call "animacy" that English doesn't really display).

Number

For more detail, see Number

"Number" refers to how many of something there are. In both English and Mi'gmaq, there are two numbers for nouns: singular (only one of something) and plural (two or more of something). In English, a plural noun often looks like the singular plus an -s at the end, for example, "girl" becomes "girls." In Mi'gmaq, there are two things you can add to a noun in order to make it plural, depending on whether the noun is animate or inanimate (for more information on these terms, see the next section). For inanimate nouns, like ptawti "table" as shown in (1), you generally add -l to the end of the word (or sometimes you make the last sound of the word longer). For animate nouns, like jinm "man" as shown in (2), you add -ug or -ig or -oq depending on the particular noun.

ptawti,  ptawti-l  
table,   table-PL  
'table, tables'

jinm,  jinm-ug  
man,   man-PL   
'man, men'

If you've looked at number in Mi'gmaq verbs, you may have noticed that Mi'gmaq verbs make a distinction between singular, dual (two participants), and plural (three or more participants). However, for nouns, the only distinction is between one and more than one.

Counting

For more detail, see Measure words

Animacy

For more detail, see Animacy

All nouns in Mi'gmaq belong to one of two categories, animate and inanimate. Animate nouns generally refer to things that are alive, such as people or animals, but other words such as containers and some types of food or clothing can also be animate. Inanimate nouns generally refer to things that are not alive, such as places and objects like rocks and tables. Some examples are below:

```
lpatuj  
boy.AN  
'boy (animate)'
```

```
mu'in    
bear.AN  
'bear (animate)'
```

tuop'ti      
window.INAN  
'window (inanimate)'

guntew     
rock.INAN  
'rock (inanimate)'

Animacy is important because it influences how to make the plural of a noun, and what form of verb to use with it. This also means that if you see a noun in a sentence and you want to try to figure out whether it it is animate or inanimate, there are a few things you can look for in addition to meaning: if its plural is -ug/-ig/-oq/-g, then it's animate, or if it's -l/long consonant then it's inanimate (see the section above for examples). If the noun is the subject of a sentence, then it's almost definitely animate, because only animate beings can do things. If the noun is the object of a sentence, the verb will have a different form depending on whether it's a VTA (animate) or VTI (inanimate).

nemi-g  epit      
see-TA  woman.AN  
'I see the woman'

nemi-tu  ptauti      
see-TI   table.INAN  
'I see the table'

Some words can change from being animate to inanimate. For example, the names of animals are animate, but when you eat their meat, the meat is inanimate. This is expressed by adding the ending -ewei to the name of the animal.

```
plamu   
salmon  
'salmon (live fish)'
```

plamu-ewei   
salmon-EWEI  
'salmon meat, salmon steak'

Possession

For more detail, see Possession

Possession covers a whole range of relationships between nouns, not necessarily relationships where there is a possession and an owner. In English, possession covers expressions such as:

my umbrellas
Tom's sister
Jamie's leg
a friend of Alice's
the music of Beethoven

The verbs used in these sentences can also be thought of as "possessive":

I have a cake.
This dog belongs to me.

As mentioned before, these relationships aren't always strictly of ownership, but can be interpreted as a type of closeness or relatedness--so while the umbrella may be my possession in the strictest sense of the word, we also shouldn't think of Tom's sister being his possession. Instead, we use possession to show that a relationship exists between the two nouns in question.

Mi'gmaq possession has one very important feature that English speakers will have to get used to. This is related to the idea of alienability. So when something is alienable, the relationship between the two nouns; "my umbrella" shows an alienable relationship, because I can give away the umbrella, and then it is no longer mine and the relationship dissolves. "Tom's sister," however, shows an inalienable relationship because no matter what, Tom and his sister will always be related.

Mi'gmaq inalienable nouns include...

body parts (i.e. 'gpitn, "your hand," and nunji, "my head")
family members (i.e. nuj, "my father," and ugmisl "his/her big sister")
a couple exceptions (i.e. nitap, "my friend" is inalienable, even though it's a relationship that might change.)

Mi'gmaq alienable nouns include...

everything else (i.e. 'gtsipuminu, "our river," and 'ntptautim, "my table," and ugtwigatign "his/her book," and so on and so forth)

Pronouns

For more detail, see Pronouns

Demonstratives

For more detail, see Demonstratives

Obviation

For more detail, see Obviation

Diminutive

For more detail, see Diminutives

Nouns

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