Nominatiivses

Nominatiivses is a term used in Estonian linguistics to refer to the nominative case or to forms described as being in the nominative. It is commonly encountered in grammatical descriptions and corpora when indicating that a noun or pronoun is in its base, dictionary form or when marking the subject of a sentence.

In Estonian, the nominative is the fundamental form of a noun or pronoun. It typically serves as the dictionary form and signals the subject of a finite clause. Nouns in nominative singular often have no ending, while plural nominative forms vary by noun class, with examples such as mehes for a singular subject? (Wait: correct examples: "mees" as nominative singular “man”; plural “mehed” – “men”). In practice, the nominative is contrasted with other cases such as genitive, partitive, and the various locative and illative forms. Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify and reflect the noun’s case in their own endings.

The term nominatiivses is also used to describe phrases or sentences where a noun is in the nominative or to label grammatical analyses. For learners, recognizing nominatiivses helps identify the syntactic role of a noun, typically as the subject or as a base form in dictionaries and language data.

Beyond Estonian, many languages employ a nominative case to mark the subject of a sentence. While the exact usage and morphology differ by language, the nominative generally designates the core participant performing the action or described by the clause. The expression nominatiivses thus functions as a practical label in linguistic writing to indicate nominative form or usage.