Sõnadevormid

Sõnadevormid refers to the various forms a word can take in the Estonian language. This grammatical concept encompasses inflection, which is the process of changing the form of a word to express different grammatical categories such as case, number, tense, mood, and person.

In Estonian, nouns change their form to indicate their grammatical case, which shows their function in a sentence. There are 14 grammatical cases, including nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative. For example, the word "maja" (house) can appear in different case forms like "maja" (nominative), "maja" (genitive), "maja" (partitive), "majja" (illative), and so on.

Verbs also undergo inflection to show tense (past, present, future), mood (indicative, imperative, conditional, potential), and person (first, second, third). For instance, the verb "lugema" (to read) can be conjugated as "loen" (I read), "loed" (you read), "loeb" (he/she/it reads), "lugenud" (having read), etc.

Adjectives also inflect, typically agreeing with the noun they modify in case and number. Pronouns and numerals also have their own set of inflected forms. Understanding sõnadevormid is crucial for constructing grammatically correct sentences in Estonian and for comprehending the nuances of its rich morphology.