Esimerkkimuotoja

Esimerkkimuotoja is a Finnish linguistic term that translates roughly as "example forms." It refers to a small set or selection of inflected or derived forms used to illustrate how a headword can appear in different morphosyntactic environments. The concept is common in grammars, dictionaries, and language-teaching materials, where esimerkkimuotoja help users understand how a word changes with case, number, tense, mood, voice, person, degree, or other grammatical categories.

In practice, esimerkkimuotoja can be full paradigms showing many forms, or compact selections that highlight the most typical or pedagogically important forms. They are often presented alongside the lemma to demonstrate regular patterns or to point out irregularities.

In edited linguistic resources and corpora, esimerkkimuotoja serve as evidence for morphosyntactic analyses: the forms are linked to the base lemma and annotated with grammatical features. They also support search and learning tools by providing concrete examples of how a word can appear in real text.

Historically, grammars have used standardized esimerkkimuotoja to illustrate rules, and today digital lexicons and morphological analyzers generate or compile them from larger lexical databases. While the term is especially common in Finnish-language materials, the general idea of example forms is used across many languages to facilitate understanding of inflectional systems.

Related terms include esimerkki (example), muoto (form), paradigma (paradigm), and taivutus (inflection).