Pööramatud

Pööramatud is a term used in Estonian linguistics to describe a specific grammatical phenomenon. It refers to words or word forms that cannot be inflected or declined in the usual ways expected for their word class. This means they maintain their original form regardless of grammatical case, number, or other inflectional categories.

These words often function as adverbs, conjunctions, or interjections, categories that typically exhibit little to no inflection in many languages. For example, certain adverbs like "nüüd" (now) or "siin" (here) do not change their form to indicate grammatical function. Similarly, some conjunctions and interjections are considered pööramatud as they are used in a fixed form.

The concept of pööramatud is important for understanding the morphological structure of the Estonian language. While Estonian is known for its rich inflectional system, with nouns having 14 cases and verbs exhibiting various conjugations, pööramatud represent exceptions to this general rule. Identifying these uninflected words helps in accurately analyzing sentence structure and word function. The presence of pööramatud words highlights the diverse ways words can operate within a grammatical system, even within a highly inflected language.