Relational nouns or relator nouns are a class of words used in many languages. They are characterized as functioning syntactically as

nouns A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

, although they convey the meaning for which other languages use

adposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s (i.e.

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s and

postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s). In

Central America Central America ( es, América Central or ) is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering the United States to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. ...

, the use of relational nouns constitutes an

areal feature In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...

of the

Mesoamerican Linguistic Area The Mesoamerican language area is a ''sprachbund'' containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethn ...

, including the

Mayan languages The Mayan languagesIn linguistics, it is conventional to use ''Mayan'' when referring to the languages, or an aspect of a language. In other academic fields, ''Maya'' is the preferred usage, serving as both a singular and plural noun, and as ...

, Mixe–Zoquean languages, and

Oto-Manguean languages The Oto-Manguean or Otomanguean languages are a large family comprising several subfamilies of indigenous languages of the Americas. All of the Oto-Manguean languages that are now spoken are indigenous to Mexico, but the Manguean branch of the ...

. Relational nouns are also widespread in South-East Asia (e.g.

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

), East Asia (e.g.

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken dial ...

), Central Asia (e.g. the

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turkic languag ...

), the

Munda languages The Munda languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by about nine million people in India and Bangladesh. Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language famil ...

of South Asia (e.g. Sora), and in

Micronesian languages The twenty Micronesian languages form a family of Oceanic languages. Micronesian languages are known for their lack of plain labial consonants; they have instead two series, palatalized and labio-velarized labials. Languages According to Jack ...

. A relational noun is grammatically speaking a simple noun, but because its meaning describes a spatial or temporal relation rather than a "thing", it describes location, movement, and other relations just as prepositions do in the languages that have them. When used the noun is ''owned'' by another noun and describes a relation between its "owner" and a third noun. For example, one could say "the cup is the table its-surface", where "its surface" is a relational noun denoting the position of something standing on a flat surface. E.g., in

Classical Nahuatl Classical Nahuatl (also known simply as Aztec or Nahuatl) is any of the variants of Nahuatl spoken in the Valley of Mexico and central Mexico as a ''lingua franca'' at the time of the 16th-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. During the s ...

: Similarly, in

: In

: Or, in Turkish:

References

Sources

* {{lexical categories, state=collapsed Nouns by type

See also

References

Sources