Groups of nouns

The following is an example of words from each of the six groups of nouns in Lefa, singular and plural, with the form of the modifier "my" (the second word in the phrase in Lefa):

my house nia gəm

my houses ɓənia ɓəm

my leg ko wəm

my legs məko məm

my tooth lɨsoŋ ɗəm

my teeth məsoŋ məm

my tree kɨtœ́ kəm

my trees ɓɨtœ́ ɓəm

my dog bœ gəm

my dogs bœ yəm

my bird fɨnyí fəm

my birds tɨnyí təm

You can see that the way the plural is formed changes for each group (including one group where the singular and the plural are identical), as does the form of "my". For those who know a language like Spanish or German, this can be seen as an extreme form of "gender" agreement, although it has no relation to physical gender.

As an example of how this works in the language, look at the two following phrases:

fɨnyí fɨ́ lɨ́fwœ́ŋ fɨ́ 'that bird of (the) chief'

fɨnyí fɨ lɨ́fwœ́ŋ ɗɨ́ '(the) bird of that chief'

In these two phrases, the word order is the same: 'bird of chief that' (there is no 'the' in Lefa). The thing that makes the difference between the two meanings is just which noun the word 'that' agrees with (not where 'that' is placed, as in English).