Sanakirjassamuodon

Sanakirjassamuodon is a linguistic term describing the form of a word that dictionaries use as the headword, or lemma, for a given entry. It represents the canonical form chosen to stand for all inflected variants of the word in lexicographic and linguistic analysis. The concept is language-specific, but it serves the same essential function across languages: enabling stable reference and efficient lookup.

In Finnish dictionaries, the sanakirjassamuoto is typically the form used to index the entry. For nouns, this is usually the nominative singular. For verbs, the headword is usually the infinitive. For adjectives, the headword is the positive singular form. Some words and multiword expressions may be treated specially when selecting a headword, particularly if a single form does not cleanly represent all uses.

The sanakirjassamuoto serves as the anchor for morphological analysis and lemmatization in dictionaries and natural language processing. Text data are often mapped from surface forms to their sanakirjassamuoto to enable consistent indexing, search, and comparison. This approach helps users locate words regardless of the form they encounter, though it can be complicated by irregular inflection, derivation, and polysemy, which may require disambiguation to determine the correct headword.

See also: Lemma (linguistics), Lexeme, Canonical form, Infinitive, Noun lemma.