nounreflects

Nounreflects is a proposed linguistic term for a class of nouns whose core semantic content includes a reflection of the referent’s perceived properties or the speaker’s stance toward the referent. In this conception, the noun does more than denote a category or object; it encodes information about how the referent is known, evaluated, or sourced by the speaker. The concept is not widely established in mainstream syntax or semantics and is primarily discussed in speculative or theoretical discussions of perspectival meaning and evidentiality.

Typically, nounreflects would interact with evidential or stance-marking systems, potentially influencing agreement, modifier selection, or the licensing of certain compounds. In typological sketches, languages with nounreflects might show restricted noun classes where only nouns with this reflectivity take certain adjectives or numerals that express source or certainty. The notion is compatible with studies of perspectival nouns and with noun-class theories in typology, though it remains an informal label rather than an established grammatical category.

For instance, in a hypothetical language, the noun 'trust-wood' could denote a wooden artifact whose origin is trusted by the speaker; using this noun in a noun phrase would bias the interpretation toward reliability assessments partial to the referred object. This is illustrative rather than prescriptive.

See also evidentiality, perspectival linguistics, stance, nominal morphology.