Erimuoto

Erimuoto is a Finnish noun meaning "a different form" or "an alternative form." In linguistic and lexicographic contexts it denotes any morphological variant of a word or phrase, as opposed to its base or dictionary form. The term is used to discuss how words change shape to express grammatical information, such as tense, mood, voice, number, person, or case.

In Finnish grammar, many parts of speech have multiple erimuotoja. Nouns, for example, appear in various inflected forms that encode case and number: talo (nominative singular), talon (genitive singular), talossa (inessive), taloon (illative), talolle (allative), talot (nominative plural), talojen (genitive plural). Verbs, adjectives and other elements likewise display erimuotoja corresponding to tense, aspect, mood, voice, degree, or agreement with subjects and objects. In language descriptions, erimuotoja are often contrasted with the perusmuoto (the lemma or base form) and with taivutusmuotoja (inflected forms).

Etymologically, erimuoto is a compound of eri- meaning "different" and muoto meaning "form." The concept is common in Finnish grammar explanations, dictionaries, and language-learning materials, where learners study how a word’s form changes to fit syntactic and semantic context. Beyond language, the term can be used more generally to indicate any alternate representation or version of something, such as documents or data presented in different forms.

In summary, erimuoto refers to the various morphological or syntactic forms a word or term can take, with special emphasis in Finnish on inflection and grammatical agreement.

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