daiktavard

Daiktavard is the Estonian term for the noun, a core word class that names objects, people, places, events, ideas and other things. Nouns function as subjects, objects, possessors and parts of noun phrases. In Estonian there are no articles, and nouns do not have grammatical gender. They are inflected for number (singular and plural) and for case, across a system of 14 grammatical cases. The specific endings depend on the noun’s stem.

Nouns can be common or proper; they can denote concrete things or abstract concepts, and they can be countable or mass. Like other parts of speech, daiktavard forms do not mark gender and are used with determiners, numerals and adjectives to form noun phrases.

A typical noun shows several case forms. For the noun raamat (book), nominative singular is raamat, genitive singular raamatu, and partitive singular raamatut; other cases have their own endings for singular and plural. The case system expresses grammatical relations and functions such as location, direction, possession or state.

In usage, daiktavard combines with adjectives and numerals and participates in various syntactic roles, including subject, direct object and predicative complements. They can appear in compounds and are the central element of noun phrases within Estonian sentences.