Grunnform

Grunnform is a term used in several Scandinavian languages to refer to the base form of a word, often serving as its lemma or dictionary form. In grammar and lexicography, the grunnform is the form under which a word is listed in dictionaries and word lists, and from which other inflected forms are derived. The exact realization of the grunnform depends on the part of speech and the language, but it generally functions as the stable citation form used for indexing and reference.

For verbs, the grunnform is commonly the infinitive or infinitive-like stem. In Norwegian Bokmål, the lemma of a verb such as spiser (is eating) is spise (to eat); in Swedish, the infinitive Äta (to eat) is the grunnform. For nouns, the grunnform is typically the singular indefinite form, the form used as the dictionary entry (for example, bok, the grunnform of bøker, books, in Norwegian; in Swedish, bok as the grunnform of böcker).

For adjectives, the grunnform is usually the positive or base form, from which comparative and superlative forms are derived (stor in Swedish and Norwegian; larger and largest forms in other dialects may vary).

In linguistic work, grunnform is central to lemmatization, morphological analysis, corpus linguistics, and language-learning resources, serving as the stable reference point for identifying word forms across inflectional systems. The term is widely used in Scandinavian grammar and is closely related to the concepts of lemma and dictionary form.

See also: Lemma, Infinitive, Dictionary form, Lemmatization.