nounspronouns

Nounspronouns are a proposed linguistic category describing words that can function as either nouns or pronouns depending on context. The concept is not standard in formal typology, but it is used in discussions of the noun–phrase and proform interfaces to describe forms that blur the typical noun–pronoun boundary.

In languages that allow fluid category assignment, nounspronouns may carry nominal features when used as nouns—such as number, definiteness, or determiner compatibility—while behaving like pronouns in discourse, clause structure, or case marking. Their distribution is language-specific and often relies on syntactic position, discourse function, or agreement systems. Some analyses treat these forms as inherently versatile proforms that can anchor noun phrases or stand as stand-ins for referents, depending on the structural needs of the sentence.

Illustrative examples are often hypothetical or drawn from constructed languages. In a hypothetical language, the form ri could be a nounspronoun: as a pronoun, “Ri came early,” referring to a previously mentioned person; as a noun, “The ri of the village gathered,” where ri is a head noun meaning “a member.” These examples show how a single form can operate in both nominal and pronominal slots while keeping a shared lexical identity.

Significance lies in how nounspronouns illuminate the space between noun and pronoun grammars, informing morphosyntactic theory, corpus annotation, and natural language processing. See also noun, pronoun, pronoun–noun interface, and proform.