Nimesõna

Nimesõna, or noun, is a word class that names a person, animal, thing, place, or concept. In Estonian grammar, nimesõna functions as the core element of noun phrases and can serve as subject, direct object, or predicate.

Nimesõnad inflect for number (singular and plural) and for case. Estonian has fourteen grammatical cases, which express relationships such as possession, location, movement, and state. The language has no grammatical gender; nouns are not marked for gender, though an animate/inanimate distinction may influence certain inflection patterns. Noun stems fall into several classes (hard-stem and soft-stem), with vowel harmony guiding suffixes, which affects the form of endings.

Definiteness is not morphologically marked on the noun itself; instead it is indicated through demonstratives, possessives, or context. Nimesõnad commonly appear with modifiers such as adjectives and numerals, and these modifiers agree in number and case with the noun.

In syntax, the noun phrase is the head of the phrase, with the noun and its modifiers forming a unit that agrees in case with the governing verb or preposition. The partitive case often marks indefinite or partial objects and is used with negation, while the genitive marks possession and many relational meanings.

Estonian nouns form their plural and case endings in patterns influenced by phonology and the noun’s stem class. Learning the main declension patterns and the functions of key cases helps in understanding sentence structure and agreement in Estonian.