All you have to do is resort to your grammar and you will soon find some words, such as: gender, number and degree. Well, it's simple, they represent the flexions of those grammatical classes of which we already know. Flexions mean changes. But how do they get along?
For that is exactly what we are going to deal with from now on, that is, knowing a little more about the meaning of the three little words: gender, number and degree. Willing then?
Gender, number and degree and the grammar classes
Gender
There are several words in the Portuguese language that can be expressed both in male and female forms, such as:
Girl girl
dog - bitch...
There are also those that only one article demarcates male and female, such as:
the artist – the artist...
Remember the ones we use only male and female? Let's cite an example?
male alligator – female alligator...
Well then, we are dealing with the gender of the words, that is, the masculine and the feminine.
Number
As you know, many of them can be pronounced in the singular, but they can also be pluralized, as in the case of:
boy – boys
book - books
Some, just add the “s”, like those in the example, others we have to add the ending “-ães”, as is what happens in breads; in others, the ending “-ões”, as in balloons, and so on.
As you could see, the number inflection concerns the singular and the plural.
Degree
Big, small, more, less, as, as... all these words belong to an inflection: that of degree, relative to the augmentative and diminutive, as well as the intensity in which a given word can be expressed. When we talk about intensity, we can think about size, that is: there is the big, as well as the small. There is a lower quality, just as there is one considered higher. That's why we have:
house - big house - shack
Louder – less tall – as tall as...
So, through everything we've learned, it's worth going back to some concepts: gender, number and degree it is the inflections that receive the words, including nouns, adjectives, numerals, among other classes.
By Vânia Duarte
Graduated in Letters
