quasinouns

Quasinouns are a proposed grammatical category used in linguistic theory to describe words that function as referents in clause structure in the capacity of pronouns, yet retain nominal properties inherited from nouns. The term is not universally standardized and appears mainly in discussions of typology, semantics, and the grammar of constructed languages. In analyses that introduce quasinouns, these items behave as core referents in argument structure, yet may show nominal morphology or derivational origins that set them apart from typical pronouns.

Typical characteristics cited include: distributionally pronoun-like, in that they can occupy argument slots such as subject or object; morphologically nominal, in that they may carry number marking, case, or connective morphology usually associated with nouns; amenable to determiner or qualifier attachment in ways that standard pronouns are not; and origin often from nouns or from conversion between noun and pronoun forms. The category is intended to capture forms that resist clear classification as either pronouns or nouns in certain languages or constructed languages, especially where pronominal reference interacts with determiner-based quantification or nominal modification.

Examples in the literature are typically schematic, such as a hypothetical quasinoun for city that stands for the city in discourse and can take a determiner or be inflected for number, or a demonstrative-based item that functions as a referential noun but can behave syntactically like a pronoun. The concept is primarily a theoretical tool for modeling cross-linguistic variation in pronominal systems and for exploring edge cases in language design and processing. Some scholars prefer alternative labels, such as pronominal nouns or nominal pronouns, to indicate similar ideas.