Talk:Finnish grammar

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On the passive forms:

"the house is being painted by Jim" can be translated as "taloa maalataan Jimin toimesta" which is literally: "by the action taken by Jim"

This does sound somewhat constructed, but people use it in more formal texts. So I think something can be said about the person doing the painting.. although I think the impersonal form is how the passive is normally viewed in Finland.

"Somewhat constructed" is almost an understatement, isn't it? I've never even heard a sentence such as "taloa maalataan Jimim toimesta" - and I've lived all my life in Finland. Of course it can be said, grammatically there is nothing wrong with it. Still, it sounds as natural as - precisely - "the house is being painted by the action taken by Jim" instead of "the house is being painted by Jim
It is certainly an understatement. In Finland, no one ever uses the "toimesta" construct. School teachers especially warn students against using it. It is an example of kapulakieli, i.e. obscure legalese. 193.167.132.66 08:26, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
School teachers only warn but do not teach the usage of Finnish infinitives properly. It seems that much Finnish grammar related to verbs has been abandoned, because the Finnish grammar has been created based on western Indo-European languages having trivial verbs. That's why people use these 'toimesta' constructs more and more. Actually, the construct is more Finnish than teachers admit. 'Poliisin toimesta' is annoyingly similar to 'poliisin puolesta' construct. Finnish language teaching in the Finnish universities needs a reform.
With a quick search, I found a typical example of this at [[1]]. "Poliisin toimesta hoidettuna toiminta kasvattaisi valtion budjettia ...", better Finnish would be "Poliisin hoitamana toiminta kasvattaisi valtion budjettia...", or something completely different. Difficult to translate to english, though. It might be something like "If this task would be conducted by the police, it would increase governmental budget ..." -- TN 17 Aug 2005
This discussion misses the main point: The Finnish passive does not have a by-phrase of the English type In the English example, it is Jim who does the painting, but in the finnish somewhat construed "toimesta" the painting is taken place because of Jim's actions, but jim does not need to be the actual painter. Trondtr 18:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
It is correct that "toimesta" is never used in actual speech, however in taking classes on syntax, I hear it a lot to disambiguate things that are being discussed. It sounds a bit funny of course. On the other hand the trick with the Finnish "passive" is that it is not exactly passive in the indo-european sense of the term. The passive in Finnish has animate person marking, on the other hand several "active" constructions may be used in a passive way. I found a lovely "minimal pair" in a sense showing off the difference between animacy in What is a passive? The case of Finnish by Satu Manninen and Diane Nelson: Laboratoriossa räjähti usein 'Things exploded often in the laboratory', vs. Laboratoriossa räjähdettiin usein 'People often exploded in the laboratory'. The English translation of the "passive" is a bit ambiguous, and otherwise you'd have to resort to a '*There is often exploded in the laboratory', but the interpretation to Finnish ears is that something animate (most likely people) are exploding in the laboratory. Either way, it would be impossible to add some sort of "subject" or "by-phrase" to these passives. --Ryan 11:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The page is getting rather large and the edit area even shows a warning. Maybe it should be split. Verbs/nouns?

The construct "taloa maalataan Jimin toimesta" is generally considered to be a swetisism (an undesirable loan from Swedish), a translation of the Swedish "hus målades av Jim". It exists in bureaucratese and ill-written stuff (such as ill-conceived attempts at formal writing), but is not used in proper speech or writing. AJK 15:21 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That construct is literally "The/a house is painted by Jim's action", so yes, it does sound artificial. It's easier and more natural to convey this as an action already completed; "Jimin maalaama talo" = "The house painted by Jim".--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo (Talk)]] 12:30, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

The section on -nen nouns is a little more complex. The phrase 'muovisessa pussissa' is more a description of the kind of bag rather than the alternative 'muovi pussissa' = 'in the plastic bag'. This could be contrasted in English with 'in the bag (made of) of plastic' Pekka Pihlajasaari

I'd say that "muovisessa pussissa" = "in the plastic bag" and "muovipussissa" = "in the plastic-bag". Subtle difference. "Muovipussi" is a compound of two nouns "muovi" and "pussi", in contrast to "muovinen pussi" which is an adjective qualifying a noun. The ambiguity arrises from the fact that in English, "plastic" can be either noun or adjective.--[[User:HamYoyo|HamYoyo (Talk)]] 12:30, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Very long words

I was once told by a young Finnish lady (who might well have been tweaking my nose) that it is possible to construct a single word in Finnish meaning "notwithstanding his total inability to make toast without burning it to a crisp". Is this true, and if so what is this word? --Phil | Talk 09:52, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

Actually there are probably several more or less equivalent ways to construct that word, depending on where you start from. One candidate might be: paahtoleivänpolttovälttökyvyttömyidessänsäkäänkään. May not be precisely to the point, but it is close. If I thought a bit longer, I might be able to polish it a bit more -- Cimon avaro 10:53, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)
That sounds wrong. As a native finn, I'd say paahtoleivänporoksipaistamattomuustaidottomuudellansakaan is the word you are looking for. -- nysv
I just have to tell my favourite example... :-) The Finnish sentence "Heittäytyisinköhän seikkailuun?" translates as "What if I should throw myself into an adventure?". And this is something you can use in an everyday conversation. The longest grammatically correct Finnish non-compound word I have seen is "epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellensäkäänkö", but that word doesn't have any practical useses and is almost impossible to translate. --Chino 06:53, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well I'm going to try to translate it: "not even of his/her lack of making things into anti-systems, you say?". It's extremely constructed and artificial. And I think there's a typo in there somewhere. By the way, by using compound words you can make words arbitrarily long. My favourite example is "jättiläislohikäärmeyhteiskunnanterveydenhuoltohenkilökunnanjohtajanviransijaisuus", meaning position of acting chairman in the health care staff of a giant dragon commune. 193.167.132.66 08:26, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The freak epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään is hard if not impossible to translate. It incorporates a structure that's pretty unique järjestelmällistää = systemize but järjestelmällistyttää = to make someone systemize for you. Even worse, it's a negative: järjestelmällistyttämätön = something that has not been made to systemize. Ok, still with me? Let's add epä: something that has not been made to dissystemize and the rest: epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään = Even without one's incapability of not making something dissystemize. And now, let's leave it at that, m'kay? Unless someone cares to translate that back into Finnish ;)
As for compound words...they can indeed go on till forever in Finnish: Like isoisänisänisänisänisänisänisänisänisänisä - Let's just say that isoisä is grand-father and isoisänisä is his father...
I think the longest word used as a real job description (that I know of) should be mentioned here. It is lentokoneapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, literally an assistant aeroplane mechanic non-commissioned officer trainee . One of my frieds was one...

[edit] Numerals

The article is missing information in numerals - it is not everylanguage which has plural and singular of numbers. I also think that pronouns should come after nouns, and say that they, too, inflect like nouns.

"Finnish language grammar" is redundant. Moving to "Finnish grammar".

Nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numbers are inflected similarly and have a group name. Pronouns have frequent exceptions though.
Yes, the article is very basic and messy at the moment. Nouns etc. have 86 regular inflexion classes and verbs have 45 classes. I'm wondering where I pour this information. Inflection part in the article looks now a little bit ... innocent.

[edit] Passive voice

More precisely the example: talo maalataan "the house will be/is being painted".

While this is technically correct no Finn would think that the house is currently being painted unless the context would define it as a possibility. The condition of something being currently made would normally be indicated by partitiivi form of the subject ie. in this case taloa maalataan "the house is being painted" - Respectively using the nominative case in the subject usually refers to something happening in (near) future talo maalataan "the house will be painted".

[edit] Agent Participle translation issue

It seems like the agent participle is mistranslated into english. At least, it should be stated that there is nothing to do with the past tense. Examples are given, such as 'tytön lukema kirja', which isn't "the book that the girl read" so much as a book that is for the girl's reading. The english translations provided seem to imply past tense. It's possible that this is just ambiguous in the way that the sentence is translated, but I thought it's necessary to point out. Perhaps it might be better in that case to use something that isn't ambiguous in english, to convey the idea, such as "tytön juoma maito", since 'drink' doesnt have ambiguities in what tense it's in. --Alcarilinque 13:35, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Word Order

The section on word order states "Besides the word-order implications of turning a sentence into a question....." but nowhere is the concept of word order and questions explained. Does anyonw know what this is alluding to?

It is said in section "Interrogatives (questions)": A question word is placed first in the sentence, and a word with the interrogative suffix is also moved to this position. I started to doubt this myself, however. Often one can hear question like "Tuo kirjako?", which has the same meaning as "Tuoko kirja?". I'm not sure if this is correct Finnish or not. Does anybody know better?
Both are correct Finnish, but I've got a more illustrative example:
Hän ajaa autolla. (S/he drives the car.)
Hänkö ajaa autolla? (Is it s/he who drives the car?)
Ajaako hän autolla? (Is s/he driving the car?)
Autollako hän ajaa? (Is it a car s/he is driving?)
Parkkipaikallako hän ajaa autolla? (Is it the parking lot where s/he is driving the car?)
Hope this helps.--Jyril 17:06, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Those examples are basicly the same as there are in the article, and they don't give any clarification about the word order: the question word (one with -ko/-kö) is still the first word in sentence. What I think the user who started this discussion wanted to know is that would it be correct to say for example "Hän autollako ajaa", which of course sounds strange, but I'm not sure if that is incorrect. What I wanted to point out in my first reply was that should "Tuo kirjako" be more correctly "Kirjako tuo" (regardless of the latter form sounding peculiar) which is what the article now says. I expressed this a bit unclearly, since those two have slight meaning difference, just like in your examples: "Tuo kirjako?" meaning "That book?" and "Tuoko kirja" meaning "That book?". SGJ 20:17, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry my misunderstanding. The more I ponder that, the less sure I am. "Kirjako tuo?" sounds less correct because 'tuo' is usually located before the word it refers to.--Jyril 22:45, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Noun cases table conflict

Hi, I just wanted to point out that this page and the page Finnish language noun cases don't match in their case tables. This page has the dialectal excessive case, whereas the more specific page does not.

I'm not a grammarian, but I'd've thought that a dialectal case would go as a foot/sidenote or something... anyway, your call, just wanted to point that out. Neonumbers 11:08, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] preterite versus imperfect

An anonymous person has changed "imperfect" to "preterite". This is contrary to every grammar book I have ever seen in Finnish or English on the subject of Finnish grammar. Whether the writer is right or wrong about latin languages I am not sure that qualifies him or her to make this change and it is certainly most likely to add confusion. I am inclined to change it back.. Your views please!Tom 22:06, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

OK I have now re-instated reference to the Imperfect Tense and removed reference to preterite. If the previous editor wishes to include reference to terms in other grammars that is OK but please do not rename the tense to something that is not commonly recognised.


[edit] Rename to Finnish morphology

I suggest this article is renamed to Finnish morphology, with a separate article on syntax. Trondtr 18:03, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prolative

Someone apparently added the prolative to the list of cases, so I'm curious. Since the prolative is not a full-fledged case in Finnish, rather an adverbial case, it should perhaps not be grouped with all the rest of the cases. It is not a case as a result of the fact that it does not show adjective agreement like the rest of the full-fledged cases do (i.e. vanhoissa taloissa 'in old houses'. If we want to list various old and mostly unused cases, there are better candidates which do show adjectival agreement. --Ryan 05:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

You're right, I removed it. Looks like the adverbial cases are missing from this article. They should be added in the adverbs section.--Jyril 06:11, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] -e nouns

Just a note to future edits, the illative -seen that is affixed to this class of nouns is actually a somewhat analogical form, meaning that is the suffix and that it is not a result of some sort of assimilation that occurs within the root/inflectional stems of -e nouns. One way that you know this is that it is applied in the same way as other case endings which have no assimilation; laittee- + n/t/ssa/sta/seen/ksi/etc. If it were assimilation, something else would happen so that extra -e- wouldn't be there, e.g., *laitteseen. --Ryan 16:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Existential sentences

It was formerly a bad example, because numbers of things never take a plural verb anyway. So I changed "kaksi sänkyä" to "sänkyjä" to drive home the point in a valid fashion.

[edit] First Infinitive

The article currently says the infinitve marker is -ta. However I am inclined to think that it is actually -a or -ä, which is added to the basic present/future tense stem. The application of normal consonant gradation can modify the oucome. And a t (which is sometimes in the weak form d) is sometimes added to avoid 3 vowels becoming adjacent. Some stem consonants can also be elided.

The article currently says that a in sanoa the t elides. If so, why? Why does it elide with Sanoa but not with Haluta?. What is the rule here? The alternative explanation is a little more convoluted, but actually explains more phenomena seen in verb forms.


[edit] first infinitive marker is better thought of as -a or -ä

It seems to me more logical to say that the start point is the stem sano- to which is added -a to make sanoa. With tiedä- the addition of the infinitive -ä causes consonant in the stem to strengthen according to normal gradation rules, hence tietää.

[edit] verb stems ending in 2 vowels

Where the stem already has 2 vowels at the end the rule is modified. Short, one syllable verb stems ending in 2 vowels or longer stems ending -oi or -öi add a weak plosive d before the basic infinitive -a or -ä.This plosive avoids the creating of verb forms with 3 adjacent vowels. Hence saa- becomes saada and ikävöi- ikävöidä.

Other stems ending in a double vowel drop the last vowel and add a slight stronger plosive -t before the infinitive -a or -ä marker. Dropping the last vowel of the stem also avoids creating an infinitive with 3 adjacent vowels Hence verb stems such as siivoa- become siivota. The fact the this last t does not strengthen according to normal consonant gradation rules is indicative that the t is a stem phenomena. Contrast for example with tietää (tiedä-) or päättää (päätä-).

[edit] verb stems ending in a consonant

Verbs with stems ending -l -n -r or -s like mennä, tulla and purra are really verbs that have consonant stems men- tul- and pur- which when the infinitive ending is added the final consonant of the stem strengthened, just as the final consonant of tietää (tiedä-) or päättää (päätä-). These stems acquire a link vowel of e in the present tense and i in the imperfect, i.e. dependent on the tense and not intrinsic to the verb stem.

Consonant gradation effects in verbs such as menetellä are entirely due to a general rule in verb formation that no two strong form consonants can be separated by a single vowel, and in such cases, the rule is that the final consonant is always strong and this weakens the preceding consonant, so that the verb form menettel- forces the t to weaken when the infinitive is formed as menetellä.

Verbs with stems ending in -s, which are of of two forms, -its (häirits-) and -s (pääs), are very similar to the consonant group above when forming the tenses but slightly different when forming the infinitve. The infinitve marker is again -a or -ä but exceptional, the s in the stem -its is elided to form for example the infinitive häritä is elided and in plain -s stem endings, t is added after the s to form infinitives like päästä. Why does this happen? I think this happens as a tidying up exercise to make all verbs end in either -t(t)a(a) or -da (or the front vowel equivalents), and thus avoiding hypothetical verb infinitives such päässä or häiritsä .... but who really knows for sure?!

Incidentally, the consonant gradation effects due to potential adjacent strong or doubled consonants precisely explains the gradation effects in participles such as menetellyt menettelevä menetelty etc..

[edit] why this explanation is superior

1. This explanation for infinitve formation explains precisely the difference in verbs such as TAVATA that have two possible stems, TAPAA- and TAVAA-. I do not see the alternative -ta infintive marker argument could this phenomenon.

2. It better explains consonant gradation phenomena in so called verb types 1, 3 and 4.

I am not the first to have concluded that a or ä is the infinitive marker. The argument is given also in the Abondola book and I think that Karlsson takes a similar view in his book too.

[edit] proposed edit

If nobody strong disagrees or can find fault with the argument, I propose changing the article accordingly. The whole article is quite long so I may put the explanations in a separate article. But it may be a while before I get the time, so there's no rush to reply!

Tom 23:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Diminutive "-kka"

"-kka" is another very common diminutive ending: kännykkä (mobile phone, känny<käsi "hand"), vasikka (calf, vasa), Sinikka (female name, sini=blue), names of small berries: mustikka, puolukka etc.

Double diminutive: lapsukainen (little child) --Muhaha 19:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Negative participle

The kieltopartisiippi, or negative participle or whatever isn't mentioned anywhere. It is basically the negation of the agent particle: tekemä > tekemätön. — JyriL talk 21:08, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Noun cases - questions

Could someone add the questions (in Finnish and English) for noun cases in the table under subheading Noun cases/Cases? That would be useful! See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_grammar for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.173.62.130 (talk) 09:50, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] enclictic particles

The article seems to be lacking information about particles. I am thinking especially right now of -kaan and -kään which seems to be able to attach to nouns as well as verbs and has a variety of meanings, not all which I can remember. It also features on many other word types though I am not sure if it is then called a particle. Is anyone here brave enough to add something to the article about particles? --Tom 19:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Irregular verbs

It is true olla (to be) is the only irregular verb in Finnish, but it is because of the potential mood, lienen etc., not because of "on" according to my old teacher. Should this be fixed? 82.103.222.215 (talk) 17:18, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The liene form is just another aspect. One can suppose theoretically that the stem of this verb is ol- which becomes on in preference to plain ol in the 3rd person singular and liene instead of the theoretical olene which would probably have to be pronounced as ollenne. Its not a huge leap from there to think that this came to be pronounced as liene (dropping the o and the second l becoming i and the nn becoming shortened. You kind of have to have a feel for phonetic effects in Finnish to understand how these transformations can happen). There are some other verbs that have irregular forms. Kaydä in the simple past tense is kävi- . I don't know any other verb like that. Tehdä is somewhat irregular also. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.222.211.182 (talk) 19:57, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Non-existant future . .

I am confused by the adage that Finnish has no future tense. On Verbix.com there is something called the "Potential" tense, and there is also a "Potential Perfect". Now I have no idea of what the difference is between tenses and moods. I'm not sure that I really want to try and find out as the whole linguistic grammatical edifice seems to be biased upon one language: Latin, or maybe two at a push if you include Greek. "Modern" Finnish, as created by Agricola (yleiskieli), is a fabrication created to mimic the grammatical structure of the Latin, as used in the Bible at that time, and to promote literacy through evangelism. It seems to me that the "Potential" and the "Potential Perfect" are dead ringers for the English "Future" and "Future Perfect" tenses. Arguments that they are distinct seem to revolve around an attempt to universalise Romance language based linguistic concepts. In this article a distinction is attempted between the Potential and the Future tenses by introducing the idea of conditionality. However the Conditional already exists in Finnish, and the Future, by definition is inherently conditional! It seems to me that the Emperor is starkers! Where is the figleaf I've missed?

LookingGlass (talk) 18:34, 13 March 2008 (UTC) I think you are barking up the wrong tree. I have not heard the argument that yleiskieli was created by Agricola and I don't think it is latinic in any way. Finnish does not need a future tense because there are several ways around the issue. The case of the onject associated with noun often gives a clue as to present or future. Luen kirjaa. I am reading a book. Luen kirjan I will read the book. The partitive case of kirja, kirjaa indicates incomplete action so the book must be in the process of being read. The direct object form, in this case kirjan normally indicates completed action with past tense verbs, but when used with the present tense it can indicate a to-be-completed future action. The book will be read. And of course, one can always add another word to indicate a timeframe such as myöhemmin (later) or huomenna (tomorrow) and so forth. The potential case, as I understand it is more associated with probablity rather than conditionality and often is more probable than improbable. Conditionality is always dependent on something so although it is often of the future it can also be used to reflect dependent actions in the past. So neither of these are stricly speaking future tenses. To be frank, the simple present tense is actually quite rare even in English as most of the time we are speaking about either past actions or future actions (though maybe the telephone has changed that somewhat), and when it is used it is not really being used to express the present but to say what things are generally true. Mary goes to church. He is a nice man. She sells flowers in the market. The ongoing "-ing" forms of the verb (I am sure it has a name but I am no grammatician) is the way the present is expressed. Mary is going to church. He just being nice. She is selling flowers in the market. And so on. Finnish may have fewer verb forms than English but it is no less rich a language because of that. It just has different ways of conveying extra temporal information.

[edit] Place names derived from words ending -nen

Maybe this is not a grammar feature . . . I am not sure.... but I have noticed that many place names are based on words ending in -nen but then the -nen word is put into the plural gentive form ending -sten. Thus Aninkaistenkatu, The Street of the Aninkainens and Littoistenjärvi, the lake of the Littoinens. Is there a reason why these place names take a gentive plural form, and is the generally the case with derived place names ending in -nen? Is it because areas became associated with several members of the same family that lived in an area? I can understand a road belonging to to a family, but an entire lake? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.222.211.182 (talk) 19:12, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

This is something I've been wondering about myself, too. A native Finn, I'd say the plural rule applies to not only genitive but all declined cases. Illative for instance, Sörnäinen, Sörnäisiin (to Sörnäinen(s)), instead of Sörnäiseen, which is the illative singular form. I can think of no logical reason for it but the rule seems to apply to all place names ending -nen, without an exception. --Vohveli (talk) 18:58, 30 May 2008 (UTC)