Tesseseya has two main classes of nouns: rational and non-rational nouns. Most nouns are non-rational. Non-rational nouns do not have different forms for number, do not take an object marker, have a larger range of classifiers, and use the pronominal clitic da=. Non-rational nouns can be derived from other words by using category classifiers as suffixes. For example, madusiyo 'dwelling place' from the verb madu 'dwell' plus the classifier siyo for locations.