posnominal

Posnominal is a term that appears occasionally in linguistics and natural language processing, but it is not a standard or widely adopted category in mainstream grammar. The word is formed from POS, standing for part of speech, and nominal, referring to noun-like elements. In discussions where it is used, posnominal typically denotes the subset of tokens that function as nouns or pronouns within a given analysis or corpus.

In practice, posnominal is connected to how text is annotated in corpora. Most annotation schemes assign a POS tag to each token, and the nominal group includes tags associated with noun and pronoun functions. Commonly included tags are NN (noun, singular or mass), NNS (noun, plural), NNP (proper noun, singular), NNPS (proper noun, plural), PRP (personal pronoun), and PRP$ (possessive pronoun). Some tagsets also recognize wh-pronouns as nominal in certain analyses, using tags such as WP or WP$. The exact composition of the posnominal set can vary by tagset and annotation guidelines.

The term is mainly a convenience in discussions about syntax and parsing rather than a rigorous grammatical category. It helps distinguish the nominal portion of sentences from verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech. However, because posnominal is not standardized, researchers typically prefer explicit references to the concrete POS tags (e.g., NN, PRP) rather than relying on the umbrella label posnominal.

See also: nominal, noun phrase, part of speech, POS tagging.