【芬兰语语法】§12 NOMINALS AND THEIR ENDINGS

 Nominals are nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals, i.e. words like the

following:

Nouns Adjectives Pronouns Numerals

auto car iso big minä I yksi one

katu street kallis expensivehe they kymmenen ten

nainen woman pitkä long tämä this toinen second

hinta price vanha old se it seitsemäs seventh

These four word classes take the same endings, they are inflected in the same

way. In addition to derivational suffixes, Finnish nominals can take four kinds

of endings: number and case endings, possessive suffixes, and enclitic

particles. The main features of all these will be introduced here, and they will

be discussed in more detail in later chapters. For the purpose of

understanding how Finnish words are made up, it is important to get a grasp

of their maximal structure and see how the endings follow one another in a

fixed sequence. Occasionally, there may be even four or five endings

occurring one after another in the same word.

The Finnish number system has two terms: singular and plural. The

singular is never marked by an ending. The plural has two endings: -t in the

nominative or basic form, and -i- in all other cases. The ending -i-sometimes

takes the shape -j-.

Singular Plural

auto car auto/t cars

auto/ssa in the car auto/i/ssa in the cars

auto/sta from the car auto/i/sta from the cars

auto/on into the car auto/i/hin into the cars

auto/lla by (the) car auto/i/lla by (the) cars

pullo bottle pullo/t bottles

pullo/sta out of the bottle pullo/i/sta out of the bottles

pullo/lla with a bottle pullo/i/lla with the bottles

pullo/a bottle (partitive) pullo/j/a some bottles

A survey of word structure 19

Finnish has some 15 cases. The table below shows the grammatical names of

the cases, their endings and basic meanings or functions. The principle of

vowel harmony (§11) determines whether the ending variant contains a front

or a back vowel.

System of cases

Case Endings Function Example Translation 1

Nominative – (pl. -t) (basic form) auto car

Genitive -n; -den, -tten possession auto/n of the car

Accusative -n, -t, – object ending häne/t him, her

Partitive -a ~ -ä; indefinite maito/a (some) milk

-ta ~ -tä; quantity vet/tä (some) water

-tta ~ -ttä perhe/ttä (some) family

Inessive -ssa ~ -ssä inside auto/ssa in the car

Elative -sta ~ -stä out of auto/sta out of the car

Illative -Vn, -hVn, 2 into auto/on into the car

-seen, -siin maa/han into the country

Porvoo/seen to Porvoo

Adessive -lla ~ -llä on; instrument pöydä/llä on the table

Ablative -lta ~ -ltä off pöydä/ltä off the table

Allative -lle onto pöydä/lle onto the table

Essive -na ~ -nä state opettaja/na as a teacher

Translative -ksi change of state opettaja/ksi (become) a

teacher

Comitative -ine- accompanying vaimo/ine/ni with my wife

Instructive -n (idiomatic) jala/n on foot

Listed below are the possessive suffixes; with the exception of the third

person, the endings are different for each person.

1 Translator’s note: With the adessive and translative cases there is often no straightforward

equivalent in English that can be used to gloss examples of isolated words. The meanings of

these cases are explained in the relevant chapters below, but in the tables and short examples

of the book the conventions adopted are as follows. The adessive ending is glossed ‘on’ wher

this could make sense (‘on the table’), ‘with’ wher an instrument interpretation would be

more natural (‘with a hammer’), ‘at’ or ‘in’ for places, and ‘“at”’ for people, etc. since in

these latter contexts the adessive case commonly marks the possessor (minulla on ‘I have’,

glossed literally as ‘“at” me is’). The translative is glossed ‘to (become)+nominal’ in order to

indicate how it would be usually understood in context; thus e.g. punaiseksi would be glossed

‘to (become) red’, since the form would typically occur in such contexts as ‘it became/turned/

changed to red’. The essive is usually glossed ‘as’, although this might not be natural in all

contexts. And the partitive is simply marked ‘partitive’, since it often corresponds to ‘no

article’ in English.

2 The sign -V- indicates a vowel which is the same as the nearest preceding vowel, e.g. Turku/

un ‘to Turku’, Helsinki/in ‘to Helsinki’, maa/han ‘into the country’, tie/hen ‘to the road’.

20 Finnish: An Essential Grammar

Singular

First person (minun) kirja/ni my book

Second person (sinun) kirja/si your book

Third person hänen kirja/nsa his/her book

Plural

First person (meidän) kirja/mme our book

Second person (teidän) kirja/nne your book

Third person heidän kirja/nsa their book

The fourth group of suffixes is that of the enclitic particles; these occur also

with finite and non-finite verb forms. The most common particles are -kin

‘also’, -kaan ~ -kään ‘(not…) either’, -ko ~ -kö ‘interrogative’, -han ~ -hän

‘emphasis’, and -pa ~ -pä ‘emphasis’. 3 Examples:

Sinä/kö tulit? Was it you who came?

Kekkonen/ko lähti Moskovaan? Was it Kekkonen who went to

Moscow?

Sinä/hän tulit. It was you who came.

Sinä/kin tulit. You came too.

Kekkonen/kin tuli. Kekkonen came too.

Sinä/kään et tullut. You did not come either.

Kekkonen/kaan ei tullut. Kekkonen did not come either.

Kekkonen/ko/han lähti Was it really Kekkonen who went

Moskovaan? to Moscow?

Vo/isi/tte/ko tulla? Could you (plural) come?

Vo/isi/tte/ko/han tulla? Could you (plural) come, please?

A Finnish nominal can have endings from all of the above four groups, but

the order in which the endings occur is fixed:

More examples are given in the diagram on the next page. Each column of

endings also shows how many endings there are of that type. Root here

means the basic form of the word, without any ending. Some roots have

different stems depending upon which ending immediately follows. For

example, the root käsi ‘hand’ has the stem käde- if certain case endings

3 Translator’s note: Both -han and -pa are glossed ‘emphasis’ since an idiomatic translation in

English would usually have to be structurally rather different. However, the two particles are not

synonymous. The particle -han often has the sense ‘I assume you know’ (Mutta sehän on kallis

‘But it’s expensive, isn’t it?’), while -pa is closer to surprise or pure emphasis (onpa kallis!

‘That is expensive!’). Furthermore, -han often functions as a politeness marker and corresponds

to the English word ‘please’.

A survey of word structure 21

follow, as in the word käde/ssä ‘in the hand’ (inessive case). Note that if a

word contains derivational suffixes these occur between the root and the

number ending.