Nunation

In some Semitic languages, notably Arabic, nunation (Arabic: تنوين‎ tanwīn) is the addition of a final nūn sound to a noun or adjective to indicate that it is fully declinable and syntactically unmarked for definiteness.

Symbol	ـٌ ‎	ـٍ ‎	ـً ‎
Transliteration	-un	-in	-an

There are three of these vowel diacritics, and the signs indicate, from left to right, the endings -un (nominative case), -in (genitive), and -an (accusative). The sign ـً‎ is most commonly written in combination with ا‎ alif (ـًا‎), ةً‎ (tā’ marbūṭah تاء مربوطة) or stand-alone ءً‎ (hamzah همزة). An alif should always be written unless the word ends in tā’ marbūṭah or hamzah or is a diptote, even though the -un, -an or -in is not written. Nunation is used only in literary Arabic; it is absent in everyday spoken Arabic, and many Arabic textbooks introduce even literary Arabic without these endings.^{[citation needed]}

Since Arabic has no indefinite article, nouns in a syntactic context unmarked for definiteness are generally indefinite; this has led to the extremely common but inaccurate belief that nunation is a marker for indefiniteness and is analogous to an indefinite article. The lack of a marker for definiteness does not necessarily make a word indefinite; in fact, many definite nouns (proper names) take nunation, as for example in the expression أشهد أن محمداً رسول الله (ashhadu anna Muḥammadan rasūlu Allāh: "I witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God."), in which the name Muḥammad, a definite noun, is nunated.

Nunation may also refer to the -n  ending of duals in Akkadian (until it was dropped in the Old Babylonian period).

See also

• Arabic diacritics
• mimation
• I‘rāb

External links

• Nunation