nominaaleja

Nominaaleja is a term used in Finnish linguistics to refer to nominal elements—words that function as or behave like nouns within sentences. The word is the plural of nominaali and is often employed to describe a broad class of items that participate in noun-like distribution across languages and grammatical traditions.

Nominaaleja encompasses nouns, pronouns, numerals when they function as nouns, and certain adjectives or determiners that can take part in noun phrases. A defining property of nominaaleja is their syntactic role: they typically form noun phrases, can be modified by determiners, and may carry inflection for number and case in many languages. In languages with grammatical gender, nominaaleja may also display gender agreement.

Nominalization is closely related to nominaaleja. It is the process by which verbs or other parts of speech are converted into nominal forms that can serve as subjects, objects, or complements in clauses. Because of this fluidity, the boundary between nominaaleja and other parts of speech can be language-specific and context-dependent.

In Finnish grammar, the concept of nominaali is used to describe the word classes that inflect for case and number, distinguishing them from verbs, which inflect for tense and mood. The term also appears in typological linguistics to compare how different languages mark definiteness, number, and case on nominal elements.

See also: noun, pronoun, numeral, nominalization, noun phrase.