Abstract The goal of this paper is to understand the internal organization of Somali nouns. More precisely, I propose an analysis of the inflectional markers, i.e. the exponents of gender, number and syntactic case. Within a syntactic approach to noun formation, I show that a list of basic exponents can be reached throughout the phonological deconstruction of the surface forms. In addition, I argue that each phonological exponent corresponds to a unique morpho-syntactic category. On a more general level, the analysis depicted illustrates the behavior and the formation of basic and non-derived nouns in Somali, regardless the notion of "noun class"
