Finnish grammar

The Finnish language is spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns elsewhere. Unlike the languages spoken in neighbouring countries, such as Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages, or Russian, which is a Slavic language, Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic languages group. Typologically, Finnish is agglutinative. As in some other Uralic languages, Finnish has vowel harmony, and like other Finnic languages, it has consonant gradation.

Pronouns

The pronouns are inflected in the Finnish language much in the same way that their referent nouns are.

Personal pronouns

The personal pronouns are used to refer to human beings only. The personal pronouns in Finnish in the nominative case are listed in the following table:

:

Because Finnish verbs are inflected for person and number, in the Finnish standard language subject pronouns are not required, and the first and second-person pronouns are usually omitted except when used for emphasis. In the third person, however, the pronoun is required: '(s)he goes', 'they go'. In spoken Finnish, all pronouns are generally used.

In colloquial Finnish, the inanimate pronouns and are very commonly used in place of the singular and plural animate third-person pronouns, respectively. Use of and is mostly restricted to writing and formal or markedly polite speech as this clear distinction has never occurred naturally in the language. (Also the distinction isn't even about animacy as and are only used when referring to humans, never to animals.) and are usually replaced with colloquial forms. The most common variants are and , though in some dialects and , and or and are used. On the other hand, , and lack reduced colloquial forms, so that variants such as , , and of some eastern varieties) are dialectal. Some common verbs, such as "to be" and "to come", exhibit similarly reduced colloquial forms:

:

The second-person plural can be used as a polite form when addressing one person, as in some Indo-European languages. However, this usage is diminishing in Finnish society.

Demonstrative pronouns

The demonstratives are used of non-human animate entities and inanimate objects. However, and are often used to refer to humans in colloquial Finnish. (This usage is quite correct in a demonstrative sense, i.e. when qualified by the relative pronoun , and in fact it is hypercorrect to replace a demonstrative or with or just because the antecedent is human.) Furthermore, the demonstratives are used to refer to group nouns and the number of the pronoun must correlate with the number of its referent.

:

Interrogative pronouns

:

is now archaic, but its inflected forms are used instead of those of : instead of ("whom"): "Whom do you love?"

Relative pronouns

:

Reciprocal pronouns

:

Reflexive pronouns

:

Indefinite pronouns

A large group that entails all of the pronouns that do not fall into any of the categories above. Notice that there are no negative pronouns, such as "nobody"; rather, the positive pronoun is negated with the negative verb . No double negatives are possible.

:

Each pronoun declines. However, the endings and are clitics, and case endings are placed before them, e.g. "any", "from any". There are irregular nominatives. As indicated, is an irregular nominative; the regular root is with , e.g. "(not) anyone", "from (not) anyone".

English lacks a direct equivalent to the pronoun ; it would be "that-th", or "which-th" for questions. For examples, "The reward depends on ''as-which-th'' one comes to the finish", or explicitly "The reward depends on in which position one comes to the finish". It would be difficult to translate the question , but, although far from proper English, the question ''How manyeth'' may give an English-speaking person an idea of the meaning.

Some indefinite adjectives are often perceived as indefinite pronouns. These include:

:

Noun forms

The Finnish language does not distinguish gender in nouns or even in personal pronouns: is 'he', 'she', 'they' (singular) or 'it' depending on the referent. There are no articles, neither definite nor indefinite.

Possessive suffixes

Cases

Finnish has fifteen noun cases: four grammatical cases, six locative cases, two essive cases (three in some Eastern dialects) and three marginal cases.

Some notes about the cases listed in the table above:
* There is historically some difference of opinion as to the character and indeed existence (for most words) of the accusative case in modern Finnish. The recent, authoritative grammar ''Iso suomen kielioppi'' takes the position that only the personal pronouns and the personal interrogative pronoun have a true accusative case which is distinguished by the suffix . For nouns, adjectives, numerals, and other pronouns, there is no accusative case; instead, these words take the nominative or genitive in object positions (where they do not take the partitive). This differs from the more traditional view, to which many learner's grammars still adhere, that there are accusative forms which appear identical to the nominative or genitive.
* A noun in the comitative case is always followed by a possessive suffix. However, as is typical in Finnish, an adjective does not take possessive suffixes: "A man with his luxurious house(s)", with comitative on both the adjective and noun, but the third person possessive suffix on the noun only.
* Regarding the illative suffix : "V" stands in for a preceding (short) vowel: yields , but yields .

Relationship between locative cases

As in other Uralic languages, locative cases in Finnish can be classified according to three criteria: the spatial position (interior or surface), the motion status (stationary or moving), and within the latter, the direction of the movement (approaching or departing). The classification captures a morphophonological pattern that distinguishes interior and surface spatial position; long consonants ( in / and in / ) express stationary motion, whereas a expresses "movement from". The table below shows these relationships schematically:

Plurals

Finnish nominal plurals are often marked by (though is a suppletive variant in the nominative and accusative, as is common in Uralic languages). Singular and plural number cross-cut the distinctions in grammatical case, and several number/case combinations have somewhat idiosyncratic uses. Several of these deserve special mention.

Nominative/accusative plural

The nominative plural is used for definite count nouns that are subjects, while the plural object of a telic verb bears the accusative plural. The syncretic suffix that covers both uses is . This suffix can only appear in word-final position; i.e. it is omitted when a possessive suffix is present.

:

Numerals

When a noun is modified by a numeral greater than one, and the numeral is in the nominative singular, the noun bears the partitive singular. Otherwise, the noun and the numeral agree with each other in number and case.

:

Inflected plural

This uses the stem of the partitive plural inflected with the same set of endings as for singular nouns. The suffix is , and it suppresses long vowels; it may only appear before another suffix.

:

As a combined example of plurals

:

Inflection of pronouns

The personal pronouns are inflected in the same way as nouns, and can be found in most of the same cases as nouns. For example:

:

Noun/adjective stem types

The stem of a word is the part to which inflectional endings are affixed. For most noun and adjective types, the nominative case is identical to the basic stem (the nominative is unmarked).

Vowel stems

A word with a vowel stem is one that ends in a vowel in the nominative, and retains a final vowel in all forms. The stem vowel can however change in certain inflected forms:

:

The change of original (pre-Proto-Finnic) final ''*e'' to means that the stem vowel of a word ending in cannot be determined from the nominative alone; one of the inflected forms must be consulted. However, most old inherited words ending in decline as ''e''-stems (or consonants stems, see below), while modern loans, where frequently is added for phonotactic reasons (as in the case of ), always decline as ''i''-stems.

Consonant stems

A word with a consonant stem is one where case suffixes can in some cases be affixed directly after the last consonant for at least some forms. Words with consonant stems come in three broad classes.

The first class of consonant-stem words largely resemble ''e''-stems, but allow elision of the stem vowel in the partitive singular, and for certain words, plural genitive. In the later case, this involves a special allomorph , employing the plural marker rather than /.

The final consonant in words of this class must be one of ''h, l, m, n, r, s, t''. Other remarks for ''e''-stem words still apply.

:

Words of this type may have somewhat irregular declension due to additional historical changes:

:

For some words of this type, modern Finnish displays a tendency of development from consonant-stems to e-stems. For example, the partitive singular of the word "bird cherry" may be (consonant stem) or (vowel stem).

Another class of consonant-stem words end in a consonant even in the nominative; if a stem vowel is required for phonotactic reasons, ''e'' again appears. Modern Finnish only allows dental and alveolar consonants (''l, n, r, s, t'') to occur as word-final, but originally, words ending in ''h, k, m'' were possible as well.
:

=Nouns ending in ''-s''

=
Vocalization or lenition is found in addition to any possible consonant gradation, e.g. (nominative) ~ (genitive), or ~ . The illatives are marked thus: , .

=''-nen'' nouns

=
This is a very large class of words which includes common nouns (for example 'woman'), many proper names, and many common adjectives. Adding to a noun is a very productive mechanism for creating adjectives ( 'dirt, filth' → 'dirty'; 'joy' → 'merry, happy'; 'plastic' → 'made of plastic'/'plastic-like' ). It can also function as a diminutive ending.

The form behaves as if it ended in , with the exception of the nominative, where it is . Thus, the stem for these words removes the and adds after which the inflectional ending is added:

:

Here are some of the diminutive forms that are in use:

:

A special class of Finnish nouns in -nen are surnames. Some of these are very old and often their original meaning is not readily apparent to a modern speaker. Many were later coined on the -nen pattern and these often have the suffix added to a word meaning a natural feature. Some representative examples are:

:

The suffix also occurs in place-names. Many place-names ending with assume a plural form when inflected. For instance, the illative of is instead of singular .

=''-e'' nouns

=
Older *''-h'' and *''-k''-stems have changed rather drastically. The consonant does not survive in any form of the paradigm, and these nouns make the appearance of ending in an unchanging . However, the former existence of a consonant in still seen in that the dictionary form represents weak gradation, and each word has two stems, a weak grade stem in which the former final consonant has assimilated (used for the partitive singular), and strong grade vowel stem to which most case suffixes are applied. The vowel stem has an additional : 'family' → : , , etc.; which represents the historical loss of a medial consonant which is sometimes found in dialects as an (e.g,. 'rust' → ).

By analogy, in standard Finnish all words ending in 'e' behave as former stems. In some dialects, the stems have however shifted to instead, e.g. standard , in Pohjanmaa ← . The illative case also changes form with a consonant stem, where the ending is assibilated to , as is the genitive.

The weak grade stem, which is found in the 'dictionary' form results from another historic change in which a final consonant has been lost. This is important to word inflection, because the partitive ending is suffixed directly onto this stem, where the consonant has been assimilated to a instead of being lost. Other case endings are suffixed to the strong grade/vowel stem.

:

More of this phenomenon is discussed in Finnish Phonology: Sandhi.

Adjectives

Adjectives in Finnish are inflected in exactly the same way as nouns, and an adjective must agree in number and case with the noun it is modifying.

For example, here are some adjectives:

:

And here are some examples of adjectives inflected to agree with nouns:

:

Notice that the adjectives undergo the same sorts of stem changes when they are inflected as nouns do.

Comparative formation

The comparative of the adjective is formed by adding to the inflecting stem. For example:

:

Since the comparative adjective is still an adjective, it must be inflected to agree with the noun it modifies. To make the inflecting stem of the comparative, the ending loses its final ''i''. If the syllable context calls for a weak consonant, the becomes . Then is added before the actual case ending (or in plural). This should become clear with a few examples:

:

Superlative formation

The superlative of the adjective is formed by adding to the inflecting stem. For example:

:

Note that because the superlative marker vowel is , the same kind of changes can occur with vowel stems as happen in verb imperfects, and noun inflecting plurals:

:

Since the superlative adjective is still an adjective, it must be inflected to agree with the noun it modifies. The becomes either or (plural or ) depending on whether the syllable context calls for a weak or strong consonant. Here are the examples:

:

Irregular forms

The most important irregular form is:

:

The form "good" is not found in standard Finnish, but can be found in the Southern Ostrobothnian dialect.

Notice also:

:

There are a small number of other irregular comparative and superlative forms, such as:

:

Where the inflecting stem is but the superlative is = 'newest'.

Postpositions and prepositions

Postpositions are more common in Finnish than prepositions. Both postpositions and prepositions can be combined with either a noun or a possessive suffix to form a postpositional phrase.

Postpositions

Postpositions indicate place, time, cause, consequence or relation. In postpositional phrases the noun is usually in genitive:

:

The noun (or pronoun) can be omitted when there is a possessive suffix:

:

As with verbs, the pronoun cannot be omitted in the third person (singular or plural):
: "I was with you"
:but "I was with him/her"

: "I will come with you (plural or polite)"
:but "I will come with them"

Prepositions

There are few important prepositions in Finnish. In prepositional phrases the noun is always in the partitive:

:

Some postpositions can also be used as prepositions:

:

Using postpositions as prepositions is not strictly incorrect and occurs in poetry, as in, for example, the song "" "under a maple tree", instead the usual .

Verb forms

Finnish verbs are usually divided into seven groups depending on the stem type. All seven types have the same set of endings, but the stems undergo (slightly) different changes when inflected.

There are very few irregular verbs in Finnish. In fact, only = 'to be' has two irregular forms "is" and "are ()"; other forms follow from the stem ; e.g. ← "you are", ← "let it be". A handful of verbs, including "to see", "to do/make", and "to run" have rare consonant mutation patterns which are not derivable from the infinitive. In spoken Finnish, some frequently used verbs () have irregular stems (, instead of ("go, come, be, put"), respectively).

Finnish does not have a separate verb for possession (compare English "to have"). Possession is indicated in other ways, mainly by genitives and existential clauses. For animate possessors, the adessive case is used with , for example = 'the dog has a tail' – literally 'on the dog is a tail', or in English grammar, "There is a tail on the dog". This is similar to Irish and Welsh forms such as "There is a hunger on me".

Tense-aspect forms

Finnish verbs have present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect tense- aspect forms.

*Present (nonpast): corresponds to English present and future tense forms. For the latter, a time qualifier may need to be used to avoid ambiguity. The present is formed with using the personal suffixes only. For example, "I take" (from , "to take").
*Imperfect: actually a preterite, but called "imperfect" for historical reasons; corresponds to English past continuous and past simple, indicating a past action which is complete but might have been a point event, a temporally extended event, or a repeated event. The imperfect is formed with the suffix in addition to the personal suffixes, e.g. "I took".
*Perfect: corresponds to the English present perfect ("I have eaten") in most of its usages, but can carry more sense than in English of a past action with present effects. The form uses the verb "to be" in the present tense as an auxiliary verb. Personal suffixes are added to the auxiliary, while the main verb is in the participle form. For example, "I have taken", where is the auxiliary verb stem, is the personal suffix for "I", is the stem for the main verb, and is the participle marker.
*Pluperfect: corresponds to the English past perfect ("I had visited") in its usage. Similarly to perfect, the verb is used in the past tense as an auxiliary verb. For example, "I had taken".

As stated above, Finnish has no grammatical future tense. To indicate futurity, a Finnish speaker may use forms that are, by some, deprecated as ungrammatical. One is the use of the verb , 'to come', as it were as an auxiliary: 'This is going to be a problem', cf Swedish . Another, less common and now archaic, is to use the verb , 'to be', with the present passive participle of the main verb: 'For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord' (Luke 1:15).

Voices

Finnish has two possible verb voices: active and passive. The active voice corresponds with the active voice of English, but the Finnish passive voice has some important differences from the English passive voice.

Passive voice

The Finnish passive is unipersonal, that is, it only appears in one form regardless of who is understood to be performing the action. In that respect, it could be described as a "fourth person", since there is no way of connecting the action performed with a particular agent (except for some nonstandard forms; see below).

Consider an example: "the house will be painted". The time when the house is being painted could be added: "the house will be painted in November". The colour and method could be added: "the house will be painted red with a brush". But nothing can be said about the person doing the painting; there is no simple way to say "the house will be painted by Jim". There is a calque, evidently from Swedish, "by the action of", that can be used to introduce the agent: , approximately "The house will be painted by the action of Jim". This type of expression is considered prescriptively incorrect, but it may be found wherever direct translations from Swedish, English, etc. are made, especially in legal texts, and has traditionally been a typical feature of Finnish "officialese". An alternative form, passive + ablative, also a calque from Swedish, was once common but is now archaic.

Hence the form is the only one which is needed. Notice also that the object is in the nominative case. Verbs which govern the partitive case continue to do so in the passive, and where the object of the action is a personal pronoun, that goes into its special accusative form: "I was forgotten". Whether the object of a passive verb should be termed the subject of the clause has been debated, but traditionally Finnish grammars have considered a passive clause to have no subject.

Use of the passive voice is not as common in Finnish as in Germanic languages; sentences in the active voice are preferred, if possible. Confusion may result, as the agent is lost and becomes ambiguous. For instance, a bad translation of the English "the PIN code is asked for when..." into raises the question "who asks?", whereas ("the device asks for the PIN code when...") is unambiguous. Nevertheless, this usage of the passive is common in Finnish, particularly in literary and official contexts. Occasionally this leads to extreme cases such as "it is wanted that the municipal board resigns", implying that there could be popular uprising near, when this suggestion is actually made by a single person.

It can also be said that in the Finnish passive the agent is always human and never mentioned. A sentence such as 'the tree was blown down' would translate poorly into Finnish if the passive were used, since it would suggest the image of a group of people trying to blow the tree down.

Colloquially, the first-person plural indicative and imperative are replaced by the passive, e.g. ("we'll go to our place") and ("let us go to our place") are replaced by (see spoken Finnish).

Because of its vagueness about who is performing the action, the passive can also translate the English "one does (something)", "(something) is generally done", as in "they say that..."

Formation of the passive is dealt with in the article on Finnish verb conjugation.

=As first-person plural

=
In modern colloquial Finnish, the passive form of the verb is used instead of the active first-person plural in the indicative and the imperative, to the almost complete exclusion of the standard verb forms. For example, in the indicative, the standard form is 'we are going', but the colloquial form is . Without the personal pronoun , the passive alone replaces the first-person plural imperative, as in 'Let's go!'. In colloquial speech, the pronoun cannot be omitted without confusion, unlike when using the standard forms (indicative) and (imperative).

Zero person

The so-called "zero person" is a construct in which a verb appears in the third-person singular with no subject, and the identity of the subject must be understood from the context. Typically the implied subject is either the speaker or their interlocutor, or the statement is intended in a general sense. The zero person has some similarity to the English use of the formal subject .

:* "In the sauna, one sweats"
:* "If you arrive in good time, you get a better seat"

Moods

Indicative

The indicative is the form of the verb used for making statements or asking simple questions. In the verb morphology sections, the mood referred to will be the indicative unless otherwise stated.

Conditional

The conditional mood expresses the idea that the action or state expressed by the verb may or may not actually happen. As in English, the Finnish conditional is used in conditional sentences (for example "I would tell you if I knew") and in polite requests (for example "I would like some coffee").

In the former case, and unlike in English, the conditional must be used in both halves of the Finnish sentence:

: = *"I would understand if you would speak more slowly".

The characteristic morphology of the Finnish conditional is 'isi' inserted between the verb stem and the personal ending. This can result in a closed syllable becoming open and so trigger consonant gradation:

: = 'I know', = 'I would know'.
: = 'I want', = 'I would like'.

Conditional forms exist for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect.

The conditional can be used for added politeness when offering, requesting, or pleading: 'Would you like some coffee?'; 'May I have that red one?'; 'I do wish you would tell me'.

Imperative

The imperative mood is used to express commands. In Finnish, there is only one tense form (the present-future). The possible variants of Finnish imperatives are:
* 1st, 2nd or 3rd person
* singular or plural
* active or passive
* positive or negative

=Active, 2nd-person imperatives

=
These are the most common forms of the imperative: "Do this", "Don't do that".

The singular imperative is simply the verb's present tense without any personal ending (that is, remove the from the first-person-singular form):

:

To make this negative, (which is the active imperative singular 2nd person of the negative verb) is placed before the positive form:

:

To form the plural, add or to the verb's stem:

:

To make this negative, (which is the active imperative present plural 2nd person of the negative verb) is placed before the positive form and the suffix or is added to the verb stem:

:

Note that 2nd-person-plural imperatives can also be used as polite imperatives when referring to one person.

The Finnish language has no simple equivalent to the English "please". The Finnish equivalent is to use either or = 'be good', but it is generally omitted. Politeness is normally conveyed by tone of voice, facial expression, and use of conditional verbs and partitive nouns. For example, means "could you", in the polite plural, and is used much like English "Could you..." sentences: "could you help me, please?"

Also, familiar (and not necessarily so polite) expressions can be added to imperatives, e.g. , , . These are hard to translate exactly, but extensively used by Finnish speakers themselves. implies expectation, that is, it has been settled already and requires no discussion; has the which indicates insistence, and means approximated "indeed".

=Passive imperatives

=
:

=3rd-person imperatives

=
The 3rd-person imperatives behave as if they were jussive; besides being used for commands, they can also be used to express permission. In colloquial language, they are most often used to express disregard to what one might or might not do, and the singular and plural forms are often confused.

:

=1st-person-plural imperatives

=
:

The 1st-person imperative sounds archaic, and a form resembling the passive indicative is often used instead: = 'let's go!'

Optative

The optative mood is an archaic or poetic variant of the imperative mood that expresses hopes or wishes. It is not used in normal language.

:

Potential

The potential mood is used to express that the action or state expressed by the verb is possible but not certain. It is relatively rare in modern Finnish, especially in speech. Most commonly it is used in news reports and in official written proposals in meetings. It has only the present tense and perfect. The potential has no specific counterpart in English, but can be translated by adding "possibly" (or occasionally "probably") to the verb.

The characteristic morphology of the Finnish potential is , inserted between the verb stem and the personal ending. Before this affix, continuants assimilate progressively ( → ) and stops regressively ( → ). The verb 'to be' in the potential has the special suppletive form , e.g. the potential of 'has been fetched' is 'may have been fetched'.

Potential forms exists for both active and passive voices, and for present tense and perfect:

:

In some dialects ('may come') is an indicative form verb ( 'comes') but grammatically it is a potential verb.

Eventive

No longer used in modern Finnish, the eventive mood is used in the ''Kalevala''. It is a combination of the potential and the conditional. It is also used in some dialects of Estonian.

:

Infinitives

Finnish verbs are described as having four, sometimes five infinitives:

First infinitive

The first infinitive short form of a verb is the citation form found in dictionaries. It is not unmarked; its overt marking is always the suffix or , though sometimes there are modifications (which may be regarded as stem or ending modifications depending on personal preference).

:

When the stem is itself a single syllable or is of two or more syllables ending in or , the suffix is or , respectively. (This represents the historically older form of the suffix, from which the has been lost in most environments.)

:

If the stem ends in one the consonants , , , then the final consonant is doubled before adding the infinitive or . In the case of a stem ending in the consonant , the infinitive ending gains the consonant , becoming or . (These consonant stems take a linking vowel when forming the present tense, or when forming the imperfect, e.g. 'to wash': 'I wash' : 'I washed'). Stems ending in , followed by a link vowel in the present or imperfect, drop the from the stem before adding the infinitive marker or .

:

Some verbs have so called "alternating stems" or multiple stems with weak-strong consonant gradation between them. It depends on the verb if the infinitive is in the strong or weak form. These have long vowel stems in the present/future tense, which already ends with or . These verbs drop the which is present in the present tense stem and replace it with in the first infinitive stem followed by the standard or first infinitive marker. The dropping to weakens a preceding , or so that a weak grade is seen in the first infinitive form. This often creates difficulties for the non-Finn when trying to determine the infinitive (in order to access the translation in a dictionary) when encountering an inflected form. Inflected forms are generally strong except when the stem ending contains a double consonant and there is only a single vowel separating this from the last stem , or .

:

Some verbs lose elements of their stems when forming the first infinitive. Some verbs stem have contracted endings in the first infinitive. Stems ending / in the present/imperfect drop the and replace it with , and where applicable, trigger the weak grade in the infinitive stem. The contracted infinitive ending / have / verbs take the infinitive stem /. These contracted verbs may also be subject to consonant weakening when forming the infinitive

e.g. 'to mention' has the longer conjugated stem as in 'I'll mention tomorrow that...'

e.g. 'to flee' has the longer conjugated stem as in 'we fled from Afghanistan'

The first infinitive long form is the translative plus a possessive suffix (rare in spoken language).

:

The first infinitive only has an active form.

Second infinitive

The second infinitive is used to express aspects of actions relating to the time when an action takes place or the manner in which an action happens. In equivalent English phrases these time aspects can often be expressed using "when", "while" or "whilst" and the manner aspects using the word "by" or else the gerund, which is formed by adding "-ing" to English verb to express manner.

It is recognizable by the letter in place of the usual or as the infinitive marker. It is only ever used with one of two case makers; the inessive indicating time or the instructive indicating manner. Finnish phrases using the second infinitive can often be rendered in English using the gerund.

The second infinitive is formed by replacing the final of the first infinitive with then adding the appropriate inflectional ending. If the vowel before the is already an , this becomes (see example from 'to read').

The cases in which the second infinitive can appear are:

:

The inessive form is mostly seen in written forms of language because spoken forms usually express the same idea in longer form using two clauses linked by the word ("when"). The instructive is even rarer and mostly exists nowadays in set phrases (for example = 'in other words').

If the person performing the action of the verb is the same as the person in the equivalent relative clause, then the verb uses the appropriate personal possessive suffix on the verb for the person. If the person in the main clause is different from that in the relative clause then this is indicated by with the person in the genitive and the verb is unmarked for person.

:

Third infinitive

This corresponds to the English gerund ("verb + -ing" form), and behaves as a noun in Finnish in that it can be inflected, but only in a limited number of cases. It is used to refer to a particular act or occasion of the verb's action.

The third infinitive is formed by taking the verb stem with its consonant in the strong form, then adding followed by the case inflection.

The cases in which the third infinitive can appear are:

:

A rare and archaic form of the third infinitive which occurs with the verb :

:

The third infinitive instructive is usually replaced with the first infinitive short form in modern Finnish.

Note that the form without a case ending is called the 'agent participle' (see #Participles below). The agent participle can also be inflected in all cases, producing forms which look similar to the third infinitive.

Fourth infinitive

The fourth infinitive has the stem ending and indicates obligation, but it is quite rare in Finnish today. This is because there are other words like and that can convey this meaning.

For example

:

Though not an infinitive, a much more common verbal stem ending is the noun construct which gives the name of the activity described by the verb. This is rather similar to the English verbal noun '-ing' form, and therefore as a noun, this form can inflect just like any other noun.

:

Fifth infinitive

This is a fairly rare form which has the meaning 'on the point of ...ing / just about to ...'

:

Verb conjugation

For full details of how verbs are conjugated in Finnish, please refer to the Finnish verb conjugation article.

Participles

Finnish verbs have past and present participles, both with passive and active forms, and an 'agent' participle. Participles can be used in different ways than ordinary adjectives and they can have an object.

Past passive participle

This is formed in the same way as the passive perfect or passive past-perfect forms, by taking the passive past form, removing the ending and replacing it with (depending on vowel harmony)

:

Past active participle

Basically this is formed by removing the infinitive ending and adding (depending on vowel harmony) and in some cases , , . For example:

:

However, depending on the verb's stem type, assimilation can occur with the consonant of the stem ending.

In type II verbs, and , , or in the stem ending is assimilated to the consonant in the participle ending (as also happens in formation of the first infinitive, although stem endings take an extra in the first infinitive)

:

The assimilation causes the final consonant cluster to be strengthened which in turn can weaken a strong cluster if one exists in the stem. See above.

In verbs of types IV, V and VI, the at the end of the stem is assimilated to the :

:

Present passive participle

The present passive participle can be constructed from the past passive form of the verb. The ending of the past passive is replaced with , which can be inflected in the same way as the present active participle. For example:
:
It is possible to translate this participle in several related ways e.g. 'which must be/is to be said', 'which can be said', 'which will be said' or 'which is said'.
Here are some sentences and phrases further illustrating the formation and use of the present passive participle:
:
This participle can also be used in other ways. If used with the appropriate third-person singular form of the verb and with the subject in the genitive it can express necessity or obligation.

: 'I must leave'
: 'They would have to go'

Inflected in the inessive plural, it can be used in conjunction with the verb 'to be' to indicate that something can or cannot be done.

: 'Is Pekka available?'/'Is Pekka able to be met with?'

Present active participle

This participle is formed simply by finding the 3rd person plural form of the verb and removing -t, and acts as an adjective describing what the object or subject of the sentence is doing, for example:

:

Agent participle

The agent participle is formed in a similar way as the third infinitive (see above), adding -ma or -mä to the verb stem. It allows the property of being a target of an action to be formatted as an adjective-like attribute. Like adjectives, it can be inflected in all cases. For example, "a man-made formation". The party performing the action is indicated by the use of genitive, or by a possessive suffix. This is reflected in English, too: – "of man's making", or "book of my writing". For example:

:
It is not required for the action to be in the past, although the examples above are. Rather, the construction simply specifies the subject, the object and the action, with no reference to time. For an example in the future, consider: "tomorrow, as the instrument you will be using is...". Here, "that which is used" describes, i.e. is an attribute to "instrument". (Notice the case agreement between and .) The suffix "your" specifies the person "owning" the action, i.e. who does it, thus is "that which was used by you()", and is "as that which was used by you".

It is also possible to give the actor with a pronoun, e.g. "that which was used by you". In standard language, the pronoun "your" is not necessary, but the possessive suffix is. In inexact spoken usage, this goes vice versa; the possessive suffix is optional, and used typically only for the second-person singular, e.g. .

Negation of verbs

Present indicative

Verbs are negated by using a negative verb in front of the stem from the present tense (in its 'weak' consonant form). This verb form used with the negative verb is called a connegative.

:

Note that the inflection is on the negative verb, not on the main verb, and that the endings are regular apart from the 3rd-person forms.

Present passive

The negative is formed from the third-person singular "negative verb" and the present passive with the final removed:

:

Imperfect indicative

The negative is formed from the appropriate part of the negative verb followed by the nominative form (either singular or plural depending on the number of the verb's subject) of the active past participle. So for the pattern is:

:

Note one exception: when the 'te' 2nd-person plural form is used in an honorific way to address one person, the singular form of the participle is used: = 'you ( polite) did not speak'.

Imperfect passive

The negative is formed from the third-person singular negative verb – 'ei' – and the nominative singular form of the passive present participle (compare this with the negative of the imperfect indicative):

:

Note that in the spoken language, this form is used for the first-person plural. In this case, the personal pronoun is obligatory:

:

Adverbs

A very common way of forming adverbs is by adding the ending to the inflecting form of the corresponding adjective:

:

Adverbs modify verbs, not nouns, therefore they do not inflect. adverbs are not used to modify adjectives (such as to express degree) like adverbs might be in English; the genitive of adjectives is used for this purpose.

Comparative formation

The comparative form of the adverb has the ending .

:

Superlative formation

The superlative form of the adverb has the ending .

:

Because of the , the stem vowel can change, similarly to superlative adjectives, or to avoid runs of three vowels:

:

Irregular forms

There are a number of irregular adverbs, including:

:

Numbers

The ordinary counting numbers (cardinals) from 0 to 10 are given in the table below. Cardinal numbers may be inflected and some of the inflected forms are irregular in form.

(*) sometimes (alternative form)

In colloquial spoken Finnish, the numerals usually appear in contracted forms.

To form teens, is added to the base number. is the partitive form of , meaning here "second group of ten". Hyphens are written here to separate morphemes. In Finnish text, hyphens are not written.
* , , ...
:"one of the second, two of the second, ... nine of the second"
:11, 12, ... 19
In older Finnish, until about the early 20th Century, the same pattern was used up to one hundred: 'thirty-three'.

Sentence structure

Word order

Since Finnish is an inflected language, word order within sentences can be much freer than, for example, English. In English the strong subject–verb–object order typically indicates the function of a noun as either subject or object although some English structures allow this to be reversed. In Finnish sentences, however, the role of the noun is determined not by word order or sentence structure as in English but by case markings which indicate subject and object.

The most usual neutral order, however, is subject–verb–object. But usually what the speaker or writer is talking about is at the head of the sentence.

:

Here ('dog') is in the nominative form but ('man') is marked as object by the case marked form . This sentence is a bald statement of fact. Changing the word order changes the emphasis slightly but not the fundamental meaning of the sentence.

:

here is the word (I) in a case form ending which when used with the verb (to be, expressed here in the form ) expresses ownership. This is because Finnish does not have a verb form equivalent of the English word 'have'. is not considered the subject.

And finally, a classic example:

:

Besides the word-order implications of turning a sentence into a question, there are some other circumstances where word-order is important:

Existential sentences

These are sentences which introduce a new subject – they often begin with 'there is' or 'there are' in English.

:

The location of the thing whose existence is being stated comes first, followed by its stative verb, followed by the thing itself. Note how this is unlike the normal English equivalent, though English can also use the same order:

:

Forming questions

There are two main ways of forming a question – either using a specific question word, or by adding a suffix to one of the words in a sentence. A question word is placed first in the sentence, and a word with the interrogative suffix is also moved to this position:

:

Forming answers

The response to a question will of course depend on the situation, but grammatically the response to a question typically follows the grammatical structure in the question. Thus a question structured in the inessive case (e.g. 'in which town do you live?') will have an answer that is also in the inessive (e.g. 'in Espoo') unless special rules dictate otherwise. Questions which in English would be answered with 'yes' or 'no' replies are usually responded to by repeating the verb in either the affirmative or negative.

:

The words and are often shown in dictionaries as being equivalent to 'yes' and 'no', but the situation is a little more complicated than that. The typical response to a question which in English is answered 'yes' or 'no' is, as we see above, more usually answered by repeating the verb in either an affirmative or negative form in the appropriate person. The word 'kyllä' is rather a strong affirmation in response to a question and is similar to the word 'niin' which is an affirmation of a response to a statement of fact or belief. (However, in conversations, may even simply mean that the sentence was heard, not expressing any sort of concurrence. The same problem occurs with the colloquial "yeah".)

:

The word is the negative verb form and has to be inflected for person and the verb itself is usually present, though not always.

: 'can you (speak) German?'
:: ('no'; 'I don't')
or better
:: ('I can't')

See also

* Finnish
* Finnish phonology
* Finnish numerals
* Iso suomen kielioppi

References

Further reading

*

{{Language grammars