samostalnik

Samostalnik is the Slovenian term for the part of speech commonly known in English as a noun. It denotes a person, an animal, a thing, a place, or an idea, and is used to name entities.

In Slovenian grammar, samostalniki are declined for number (singular or plural) and for case. They show gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and are inflected in six cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and locative. The endings depend on the word’s gender and declension class. Nouns pair with adjectives, which agree in gender, number, and case.

Samostalniki are divided into navadni (common) nouns and lastni (proper) nouns. Common nouns refer to general items, while proper nouns name specific people, places, or organizations and are written with a capital letter in Slovenian.

Slovenian lacks an article system, so samostalniki do not encode definiteness by article. Demonstratives such as ta (this) or ta knjiga can mark definiteness in context.

Usage: As core content words, samostalniki can function as subjects or predicates and as objects or complements; they combine with numerals and adjectives and participate in the sentence’s syntactic structure through their case forms. They are essential for naming and referencing entities within Slovenian discourse.

See also: Slovenian grammar; parts of speech; declension.