many speakers do not maintain this distinction and all nouns may take the plural inflection. One dialect, that of the Eastern Huasteca, has a distinction between two different plural suffixes for animate and inanimate nouns. In most varieties of Nahuatl, nouns in the unpossessed singular form generally take an absolutive suffix. The most common forms of the absolutive are -tl after vowels, -tli after consonants other than l, and -li after l. Nouns that take the plural usually form the plural by adding one of the plural absolutive suffixes -tin or -meh, but some plural forms are irregular or formed by reduplication. Some nouns have competing plural forms. Singular noun: Plural animate noun: Plural animate noun with reduplication: Nahuatl distinguishes between possessed and unpossessed forms of nouns. The absolutive suffix is not used on possessed nouns. In all dialects, possessed nouns take a prefix agreeing with number and person of its possessor. Possessed plural nouns take the ending -. Absolutive noun: Possessed noun: Possessed plural: Nahuatl does not have grammatical case but uses what is sometimes called a relational noun to describe spatial (and other) relations. These morphemes cannot appear alone but must occur after a noun or a possessive prefix. They are also often called postpositions or locative suffixes. In some ways these locative constructions resemble and can be thought of as locative case constructions. Most modern dialects have incorporated prepositions from Spanish that are competing with or that have completely replaced relational nouns. Uses of relational noun/postposition/locative -pan with a possessive prefix: Use with a preceding noun stem: Noun compounds are commonly formed by combining two or more nominal stems or combining a nominal stem with an adjectival or verbal stem. Pronouns Nahuatl generally distinguishes three persons, both in the singular and plural numbers. In at least one modern dialect, the Isthmus-Mecayapan variety, there has come to be a distinction between inclusive (I/we and you) and exclusive (we but not you) forms of the first person plural: First person plural pronoun in Classical Nahuatl: "we" First person plural pronouns in Isthmus-Mecayapan Nahuat: nejamēn () "We, but not you" (= me & them) tejamēn () "We along with you" (= me & you & them) Much more common is an honorific/non-honorific distinction, usually applied to second and third persons but not first. Non-honorific forms: "you sg." "you pl." "he/she/it" Honorific forms "you sg. honorific" "you pl. honorific" "he/she honorific"