Nounending

Nounending is a term used in linguistics to refer to the final part of a noun that carries grammatical information. In many languages, nouns are marked with endings—suffixes, infixes, or final vowels—that indicate properties such as case, number, gender, definiteness, or noun class. The study of noun endings falls under nominal morphology and declension.

The distribution and complexity of noun endings vary widely. Some languages have rich systems of declension with many endings, while others rely more on word order or articles. For example, Latin and Russian use extensive case endings on nouns, Finnish marks a large number of cases, and Turkish uses agglutinative suffixes to express a chain of grammatical relations. English largely uses noun endings only for number (the plural -s) and possessive forms, while other grammatical relations are signaled by function words.

Common functions include marking case (nominative, accusative, genitive), number (singular, plural), and sometimes gender or noun class. In some languages, definiteness or animacy is encoded in endings, and adjectives and determiners may change to agree with the noun's ending. Ending patterns can be regular or irregular and may interact with stem changes.

Noun endings are important for linguistic analysis, language learning, and natural language processing. They influence syntax, meaning, and agreement, and can pose challenges for automated parsing, especially in languages with many irregular forms or vowel harmony.

In constructed languages or typological surveys, nounending schemes are often designed to be regular, to illustrate particular grammatical concepts, or to shape sentence structure.