Deceased (DEC)

Deceased nouns (Mitoochaboobawim Mapwiipawimdomoo, “Words of Death”) are nouns that have the quality of being dead. Similarly to animal nouns, they have no biological gender, even if they were human masculine or human feminine in life. The exception to this rule are dead plants, which still take the plant/neuter class. The status of this class is often disputed amongst linguists studying Oshipimigegowaak. Some consider it to be a subclass of the animal and human classes. Others consider it to be a set of inflectional suffixes due to how it can change the meaning of a living noun. For example, the word below means dead man. However, the word matab is a human masculine noun, but it’s taking a deceased noun suffix.