agentnoun

Agentnoun is a term used to refer to the linguistic category of agent nouns—the nouns that designate the agent or doer of an action. These nouns occur across languages and typically derive from verbs, serving to label the person or thing that performs the action.

In English, productive agent nouns are often formed with suffixes such as -er, -or, and -ist, as in runner, actor, and artist. They can also arise through zero-derivation, where the verb itself is used as a noun for the doer, as in pilot or judge.

Semantically, agent nouns encode agency and frequently serve as the subject in sentences. Many denote occupations (teacher, driver), while others refer to general doers (runner) or institutional or conceptual roles (developer, author). They can shift emphasis from the action to the performer and may interact with aspect and tense in complex sentences.

Cross-linguistically, languages differ in productive agent noun formation. German tends to use -er; French uses -eur/-euse; Spanish uses -dor/-dora for many worker nouns, with gender markings. Some languages rely on irregular formations or alternative morphemes and may use noun-class systems or compounding to express agentive meaning.

The study of agent nouns intersects with broader topics such as nominalization, argument structure, and word formation. Agent nouns help capture who performs an action and contribute to the flexibility of noun-based representations of events.