nonnominative

Nonnominative is a linguistic term used to describe forms or arguments that do not bear the nominative case. It is a descriptive label applied to elements that are not in the subject form of a sentence, or to noun phrases that appear in non-subject roles within a given language’s case system.

In languages with explicit case marking, the nominative case is typically associated with the subject of a sentence, especially in nominative–accusative alignment. Nonnominative forms include other cases such as the accusative (direct object), dative (indirect object), genitive (possessive), instrumental, and various oblique cases. For example, in German, der Mann is nominative for “the man,” while den Mann is accusative for “the man” as a direct object, a nonnominative form in that context. Pronouns also show nonnominative forms, such as ich (nominative) versus mich (accusative).

In ergative–absolutive languages, the nonnominative pattern is often described in terms of the absolutive case, which marks the object of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb. In such systems, the nominative case is not used for those arguments in the same way as in nominative–accusative languages, making the relevant forms nonnominative by design.

The term nonnominative is primarily a descriptive label rather than a separate grammatical category. It is used to discuss how different languages mark arguments and how certain noun phrases do not bear the nominative case in their respective syntactic configurations. See also nominative–accusative languages, ergative–absolutive languages, and case marking.