Käänetusega

Käänetusega is an Estonian linguistic term that describes the property of a word or form to participate in inflection. In simple terms, it refers to words that carry grammatical endings to indicate case, number and other grammatical categories within the Estonian inflectional system. The word is formed from the noun käänetus (inflection) with the suffix -usega, which yields a noun meaning “the state or quality of having inflection.”

In linguistic descriptions, käänetusega is used to distinguish forms that display inflection from forms that do not. It is most relevant for nouns, adjectives, pronouns and certain verb forms that take different endings depending on grammatical context. The concept helps analysts compare paradigms, such as the various cases a noun may take or the degrees of comparison an adjective can possess.

The term is commonly encountered in grammars, dictionaries and scholarly descriptions of Estonian morphology. It is especially helpful when discussing how words integrate into the language’s rich system of endings, or when contrasting native vocabulary with borrowed items that may have limited or no inflection. While käänetusega is primarily a technical descriptor, it reflects a central aspect of Estonian grammar: the grammatical endings that signal how a word functions in a sentence.