Nunation

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

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 'llāh(i): "I witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God."), in which the name Muhammad, 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
• ʼIʻrāb

External links

• Nunation