"child" is considered "lower class" or neuter. Noun inflection Nouns are inflected based on number and grammatical case, of which there are 9: nominative case, accusative case, dative case, instrumental case, sociative case, locative case, ablative case, genitive case, and vocative case. If the plural is used, the noun is inflected by suffixing the noun stem with first the plural marker -kaḷ, and then with the case suffix, if any. Otherwise, if the singular is used, the noun is instead inflected by suffixing either the noun stem with the case suffix, or the oblique stem with the case suffix. An optional euphonic increment can occur before the case suffix. When the noun ends in a vowel, a ''v'' or a ''y'' are used between the noun and the case suffix, and if the noun ends in an ''m'' this will be changed to a ''th''. Genders and number The grammatical gender of Tamil nouns corresponds to their natural sex. Nouns in Tamil have two numbers, singular and plural. Grammatical gender, known as in Tamil, encompasses both the concepts of gender and number. Masculine and feminine genders are only applicable to "higher class" nouns. Even though the genders of animals are marked in a sentence (e.g.: "female, dog"), grammatically they are handled as a neuter noun. Thus there are five genders in Tamil, namely, masculine singular ( ), feminine singular ( ), high-class plural ( ), lower-class singular ( ), lower-class plural ( ). These are summarized in the table below. Pronouns Demonstratives and Interrogatives In Tamil, the demonstrative particles are a- (அ), i- (இ), and u- (உ) (archaic and has fallen out of use, except in Sri Lankan dialects). These demonstrative particles display deictic properties. i- (இ) is a near deixis form, which demonstrates the objects around/near the first person, while a- (அ) has distant deixis form, which demonstrates things near the 3rd person. u- (உ) was used to indicate objects near the second person, but has gradually fallen out of use. In modern Tamil i- (இ) indicates objects nearer and a- (அ) indicates objects in a distance. Using these particles demonstrative pronouns are derived. The same set of pronouns is also used as personal pronouns in 3rd person. e.g. avan (he), atu (that object/being), anta (that) e- (எ) and yā- யா are the two important interrogative particles in Tamil. e- (எ) is used for deriving the interrogative pronouns. e.g.