Substantiivikseen

Substantiivikseen is a hypothetical linguistic term used to describe the process and result of turning a word into a noun, a nominalization. The coinage blends a reference to substantives with a fictional suffix -seen that marks the form as a noun-bearing, nominalized element. It is not a standard term in established grammars.

In the imagined framework of substantiivikseen, the suffix or derivational mechanism attaches to bases such as verbs or adjectives to yield nouns that denote the act, state, or quality associated with the base. The nominalized form may then participate in typical noun-oriented grammar, including case marking, determiners, and number agreement, depending on the language system being modeled. The semantic effect is to shift focus from process or attribute to the concrete nounized item or concept.

Typologically, substantiivikseen is discussed as a productive or limited morpheme within constructed languages or theoretical exercises. In natural languages, nominalization occurs through various strategies rather than a single universal suffix, so substantiivikseen is mainly a design convention used for comparison, typology experiments, or conlang development. It helps illustrate how a language might encode the movement from a lexical class to a substantive category.

Examples are often given in abstract terms: a verb base meaning “to run” could take substantiivikseen to form runseen, interpreted as “the act of running.” An adjective base meaning “red” could yield redseen, interpreted as “the red thing” or “the state of being red,” depending on the language’s syntax. The exact interpretation depends on the surrounding grammar and discourse context.

See also: nominalization, derivational morphology, conlang design.