linguistic:paraphrasing
Nouns and pronouns

Khmer nouns do not inflect for grammatical gender or singular/plural. There are no articles, but indefiniteness is often expressed by the word for "one" (មួយ) following the noun as in ឆ្កែមួយ ("a dog"). Plurality can be marked by postnominal particles, numerals, or reduplication of a following adjective, which, although similar to intensification, is usually not ambiguous due to context.

Classifying particles are used after numerals, but are not always obligatory as they are in Thai or Chinese, for example, and are often dropped in colloquial speech. Khmer nouns are divided into two groups: mass nouns, which take classifiers; and specific, nouns, which do not. The overwhelming majority are mass nouns.

[kʰmawɗaj

pencil

piː

two

ɗaəm]

CLF

pencil two {CLF }

"two pencils"

Possession is colloquially expressed by word order. The possessor is placed after the thing that is possessed. Alternatively, in more complex sentences or when emphasis is required, a possessive construction using the word របស់ (~, "property, object") may be employed. In formal and literary contexts, the possessive particle នៃ () is used:

Pronouns are subject to a complicated system of social register, the choice of pronoun depending on the perceived relationships between speaker, audience and referent (see Social registers below). Khmer exhibits pronoun avoidance, so kinship terms, nicknames and proper names are often used instead of pronouns (including for the first person) among intimates. Subject pronouns are frequently dropped in colloquial conversation.

Adjectives, verbs and verb phrases may be made into nouns by the use of nominalization particles. Three of the more common particles used to create nouns are,, and. These particles are prefixed most often to verbs to form abstract nouns. The latter, derived from Sanskrit, also occurs as a suffix in fixed forms borrowed from Sanskrit and Pali such as ("health") from ("to be healthy").