noundetalj

Noundetalj is a hypothetical grammatical feature used in speculative linguistics and in constructed languages to describe a noun-centered system of marking that encodes information normally conveyed by determiners, adjectives, and some aspects of number and definiteness directly on the noun stem or an adjacent particle. The concept emphasizes compact noun phrases and can reduce or replace separate determiner or adjective phrases.

The term is a blend of “noun” and “detail” and was coined in the early 2010s by conlanger and linguist Mara Kestrel. It is not attested as a feature of natural languages, but it has been explored in thought experiments and in the design of engineered languages to study how noun phrases might be structured when most grammatical information is packaged into the noun itself.

Morphological realization of noundetalj can take several forms. In integrated noundetalj systems, markers attach directly to the noun head as suffixes or infixes, encoding features such as definiteness, number, and animacy. In peripheral or cliticized systems, a determiner-like element attaches to the noun phrase as a separate, closely linked particle or clitic. Some designs allow multi-feature markers that combine several semantic dimensions into a single affix. The approach can be compatible with both analytic and agglutinative typologies, depending on how overt the markers are and how freely they combine.

Examples (fictional): In the conlang Luminish, the noun libro with the noundetalj suffix -nu yields the definite singular “the book”; libro-nu-lan marks the definite plural “the books.” In Tarin, sora-etal may mark a singular definite noun, while sora-etalja marks a plural definite noun. These illustrate how noundetalj can encode determiner and number information within or alongside the noun itself.