Käänuvormi

Käänuvormi is a linguistic term used in some Finnish-language grammars to denote a grammatical form that signals an inversion or reversal of the usual agent–patient roles in a clause. The word is derived from the Finnish kääntää, meaning to turn or invert, and the form is described as a “turned” or inverted variant of a normal verb or noun morphology. In typological descriptions, käänuvormi may be discussed as a type of inverse voice or a related mechanism for reassigning argument prominence within a clause.

The realization of a käänuvormi varies across languages. It can appear as a suffix on the verb, a special verb stem, or as a case marker on the noun, depending on the language’s morphosyntactic system. The core function is to indicate that the usual alignment between agent and patient is altered, or that the discourse focus shifts to a different participant. In such descriptions, käänuvormi is often treated alongside cross-linguistic concepts like inverse voice, ergativity, or antipassive, though the exact formal implementation differs from language to language.

In Finnish linguistic literature, käänuvormi is not a standard or universal feature of the language but may be discussed in comparative or theoretical contexts. It is typically used as a label in discussions of typological possibilities for languages that encode participant roles beyond the straightforward active/passive distinction. The term helps describe how some languages encode argument structure in a way that differs from the default alignment.

See also: inverse voice, voice systems, ergativity, antipassive, typology of valency.