Catalan grammar

Features include: Some distinctive features of Catalan among Romance languages include the general lack of masculine markers (like Italian -o), a trait shared with French and Occitan; and the fact that the remote preterite tense of verbs is usually formed with a periphrasis consisting of the verb "to go" plus infinitive.

As with other Romance languages, Catalan articles are subject to complex elision and contraction processes.

The inflection of articles is complex, especially because of frequent elision, but is similar to neighboring languages.

[2] Catalan has more preposition–article contractions than Spanish, like dels ("of + the [plural]"), but fewer than Italian (which has sul, col, nel, etc.).

[3] In some regions, especially in the Balearic islands, the definite article derives from the Latin determiner ipse.

[5] There is a tendency to inflect adjectives as four-form instead of two-form, something that is prevalent in Occitan and standard in French.

Nouns denoting a person, such as home "man" or dona "woman", generally agree with the natural gender of what is described.

[7] Like all the Western Romance languages, the formation of the plural involves the addition of the suffix -s to the singular.

In adjectives with distinct feminine singular form, the masculine is usually unmarked for gender, and ends in a consonant.

Degrees of comparison are expressed with a construction implying the adverb més "more" or menys "less": Like many other Romance languages, Catalan adjectives have an absolute superlative form, expressed with the suffix -íssim, placed between the stem and the gender / number suffix.

They do not display any inflection; that is, their form does not change to reflect their precise role, nor any characteristics of what they modify.

For example, the feminine singular form of lent ("slow") is lenta, so the corresponding adverb is lentament ("slowly").

The feminine forms meva, teva, and seva may appear dialectally with /w/ instead of /β ~ v/: meua, teua, and seua.

Thus, Catalan can have m'hi recomanaren ("they recommended me to him"), whereas in French one must say ils m'ont recommendé à lui, and in Spanish me recomendaron a él.

[2] This allows the placement of almost any nominal term as a sentence topic, without having to use so often the passive voice (as in French or English), or identifying the direct object with a preposition (as in Spanish).

[2] The Catalan verbal system is basically common to all Western Romance, except that most dialects replace the analytic perfect indicative with a periphrastic tense composed of vaig, vas (vares), va, vam (vàrem), vau (vàreu), van (varen) and the infinitive.

Catalan verbs are traditionally divided into three conjugations, with vowel themes -a-, -e-, -i-, the last two being split into two subtypes.

[2] Verbal periphrases of obligation: (*) Although it is not correct[further explanation needed] the usage of the verbal periphrasis *tenir + que + infinitive (obligation) in the Standard (instead of haver + de, which is roughly equivalent to English "have to"), it is widely used in colloquial Catalan and Valencian.