Masculine declensions

The three masculine declensions have the following identifying characteristics:

• 1st declension: nom. sing. in -s or -š, thematic vowel -a- (e.g. vīrs < *wī́ˀras, "man, husband")
• 2nd declension: nom. sing. in -is (or -ns/-ss, see below), thematic vowel -i- (e.g. skapis "wardrobe")
• 3rd declension: nom. sing. in -us, thematic vowel -u- (e.g. tirgus "market, bazaar")

The full paradigms of endings for the three declensions is given in the following table:

The 2nd declension exhibits palatalization of the final stem consonant in the genitive singular and throughout the plural (p → pj in the example above, but see below for full details). Exceptions to this include compound nouns and proper names ending in -dis or -tis (e.g. Atis, gen. sing. Ata).

A small subclass of 2nd declension nouns have identical nominative and genitive singular (most of them ending in -ens). These are part of the so-called consonant stem nouns: e.g. akmens "stone", asmens "blade", mēness "moon", rudens "autumn", sāls "salt", ūdens "water", and zibens "lightning". The 2nd declension noun suns "dog" has the regular genitive singular suņa.

Feminine declensions

The three feminine declensions can be characterized as follows:

• 4th declension: nom. sing. in -a, thematic vowel -a- (e.g. sieva "woman, wife")
• 5th declension: nom. sing. in -e, thematic vowel -e- (e.g. upe "river")
• 6th declension: nom. sing. in -s, thematic vowel -i- (e.g. nakts < *náktis "night")

The full paradigms of endings for the three declensions is given in the following

The final stem consonant is palatalized in the genitive plural of 5th and 6th declension nouns (in the examples above, p → pj and t → š, but see the next section for full details). Exceptions to this include loanwords such as epizode (gen. pl. epizodu) in the 5th declension and a handful of words in the 6th declension: acs "eye", auss "ear", balss "voice", zoss "goose".

The 4th and 5th declensions include a number of masculine nouns (e.g. puika "boy", or proper names such as Dilba, Zvaigzne), or common gender nouns that are either masculine or feminine depending on their use in context (e.g. paziņa "acquaintance", bende "executioner"). Some surnames (e.g. Klints) belong to the 6th declension for both masculine and feminine.^[1] In these cases, the masculine nouns take the same endings as given in the table above, except in the dative singular:

• 4th decl.: -am (e.g. dat. sing. puikam "boy")
• 5th decl.: -em (e.g. dat. sing. bendem "male executioner", cf. bendei "female executioner")
• 6th decl.: -im (e.g. dat. sing. Klintim for male surname, cf. Klintij for female surname)

The 6th declension noun ļaudis "people" is masculine. It has no singular forms, only regular plural forms.

Consonant shift (stem-final iotation and palatalization)

Some of the case endings given in the declension tables above begin with an underlying palatal approximant - /j/. This is true of the 2nd declension genitive singular (ending -ja), all forms of the 2nd declension plural, and the genitive plural of the 5th and 6th declensions (ending -ju).

In Latvian literature this process is collectively referred to as līdzskaņu mija,^[2] i.e., consonant shift. Jotēšana (cf. German Jotisierung), i.e., iotation can be further distinguished as a subcategory.^[3] In English Academia the term "iotation" is often used to refer to properties of Eastern Slavic vowels wherein they acquire an underlying /j/ which palatalizes the preceding consonants regardless of their position within a word which is similar to the phenomenon of assimilative palatalization of consonants in Lithuanian. Latvian however does not have assimilative palatalization of consonants^[4] and the term "iotation" is used strictly in the sense of stem-final labial consonants being "affixed with an iota" (i.e., the letter ⟨J⟩) in 2nd, 5th and 6th declension nouns.

Besides labial consonants (/p, b, m, v, f/) that are iotated, coronal consonants (/n, t, d, s, z, l/, see below on /r/) and affricates (/ts, dz/) and their clusters can be said to undergo palatalization. Thus, for example, plain Latvian ⟨L⟩ (similar to the standard value of /l/ in American English or if not proceeded by a front vowel - Brazilian Portuguese, sometimes distinguished as "dark L" - /ɫ/) is palatalized to ⟨Ļ⟩, a palatal lateral approximant - /ʎ/.

Indefinite declension

Masculine indefinite adjectives are declined like nouns of the first declension, and feminine indefinite adjectives are declined like nouns of the fourth declension.

Definite declension

In the history of Latvian, definite noun phrases were constructed with forms of an old pronoun *jis; traces of this form can still be seen in parts of the definite adjectival paradigm.^[7] Note that only definite adjectives are used in the vocative case. The nominative form can always be used as a vocative. If, however, the modified noun appears as a vocative form distinct from its nominative form (this can only happen with singular nouns, as can be seen from the declension tables above), then the vocative form of the adjective can optionally be identical to its accusative form in -o.^[8]

Examples

The declension of the adjective zils/zila "blue" is given below.

Adjectives containing the suffix -ēj- have reduced case endings in the dative and locative. For example, vidējs, -a "central" (indefinite) has the following definite paradigm:

Personal pronouns

The third person personal pronouns in Latvian have a regular nominal declension, and they have distinct masculine and feminine forms. The first and second person pronouns, and the reflexive pronoun, show no gender distinction, and have irregular declensions.

^*After a preposition governing the dative (e.g. līdz "to, until"), the dative forms manim, tevim, and sevim are possible. These forms may replace genitive and accusative pronouns with other prepositions, too.^[9]

Possessive pronouns

There are five root possessive pronouns that change endings depending on the declension.

• mans (1st person singular) - my, mine
• tavs (2nd person singular) - your, yours
• viņējs (archaic 3rd person singular) - his, her, their
• savs (reflexive possessive) - (my, your, his, her, our, their) own
• katrs (reflexive possessive) - every, each, any

The below table of endings replace the bolded characters above for the various declensions,

• only for first person (ie. mans)

In addition to the pronouns that have different declensions, there are pronouns that stay the same in all declensions,

• viņa/viņas (3rd person singular) - his/her
• mūsu (1st person plural) - our
• jūsu (2nd person plural/formal) - your
• viņu (3rd person plural) - their

Other pronouns

The following tables show the declension of the demonstratives tas "that" and šis "this".

The interrogative/relative pronoun kas "who, what" has the same declension, but it has only singular forms (and no locative form, with the adverb kur "where" used instead). The same applies to forms derived from kas: nekas "nothing", kaut kas "something", etc.

The intensive pronoun pats/pati (cf. "I myself", "they themselves") is irregular:

Other pronouns and determiners exhibit regular (indefinite) adjectival declension:

• the demonstrative forms tāds/tāda "such (as that)" and šāds/šāda "such (as this)"
• the 1st and 2nd person singular possessive forms mans/mana "my", tavs/tava "your (fam.)" (and the reflexive savs/sava)
• the interrogatives kurš/kura "which", kāds/kāda "what (kind)", and indefinite pronouns derived from them, e.g. nekāds "no", kaut kāds, nezin kāds "some kind of"
• other indefinite pronouns such as dažs/daža "some, certain", cits/cita "other", viss/visa "all", (ik)katrs/(ik)katra "every", ikviens/ikviena "each"

Instrumental case

The following table illustrates case syncretism in the Latvian instrumental form. In the singular, the instrumental is identical to the accusative. In the plural, the instrumental is identical to the dative.

Some linguists also distinguish an ablative case that is identical to the genitive in the singular and the dative in the plural.

The ablative is generally not presented as a separate grammatical case in traditional Latvian grammars, because it appears exclusively with prepositions. One can say instead that prepositions requiring the genitive in the singular require the dative in the plural. Also it is important to note that the Latvian ablative case is not an archaism but rather an innovation.

The ablative case emerged in Latvian under the circumstances of shifting the government of almost all prepositions in the plural to the dative form. This shift was caused by the loss of the old accusative form in the singular, which became identical to the instrumental form: A.-I. vīru, kāju, māsu. In the plural, most feminine nouns had identical forms for the dative and the instrumental case. The masculine form ending in "-īs" was dropped and the dative ending was introduced there by analogy: I. vīrīs >> vīriem (<< D. vīriem). Therefore, the instrumental case merged with the dative in the plural and the accusative in the singular. Feminine nouns had in the meantime levelled their G.Sg.~N.Pl.~Acc.Pl. endings: GSg,NPl,AccPl kājas; AccSg,ISg,GPl kāju. Therefore, prepositional constructions became ambiguous: uz pļavas - "on the meadow" or "to the meadows"; uz pļavu - "on the meadows" or "to the meadow". To at least partly reduce this, the dative case was introduced after most prepositions in the plural: uz pļavas (on the meadow), uz pļavu (to the meadow), uz pļavām (on/to the meadows). Therefore, almost all the prepositions that governed the genitive started taking the dative-instrumental case in the plural, giving a new birth to the ablative case.

The instrumental case, on the other hand, cannot be eliminated so easily, because it can be used in some contexts without any preposition:^[10]

• vīrs sarkanu bārdu "a man with a red beard" (singular: instrumental = accusative)
• meitene zilām acīm "a girl with blue eyes" (plural: instrumental = dative)

Dual number

Old Latvian had also a Dual number. Nowadays perhaps in some dialects the dual might be used only in some words representing body parts, e.g. divi roki, kāji, auši, akši, nāši 'two hands, legs, ears, eyes, nostrils', in such phrases like: skatīties ar abāmu akšāmu 'to look with both eyes', klausīties ar abāmu aušāmu 'to listen with both ears', ņemt ar abāmu rokāmu 'to take with both hands', lekt ar abāmu kājāmu 'to jump with both legs'.

The old Dual endings of all cases:

Locative case forms

The locative case once had three forms: inessive (the regular and most common form), illative (for example in old Latvian texts: iekš(k)an tan pirman vietan, in modern Latvian it has been replaced by the inessive, but vestiges of what once was an illative final -an changed to an -ā remain in some adverbs, e.g. āran > ārā 'outdoors, outside', priekšan > priekš 'for'), allative (only used in a few idiomatic expressions like: augšup, lejup, mājup, kalnup, šurp, turp). The later two are adverb-forming cases.