Sanatyypistä

Sanatyypistä is a Finnish linguistic term formed from sanatyppi, meaning word type or part of speech, with the elative suffix -stä indicating “from” or “depending on” in usage. In academic and descriptive Finnish grammar, sanatyypistä is used to frame statements that depend on the word type being discussed. The concept of sanatyypit, i.e., the different word classes, is central to understanding how Finnish words change form and function in sentences.

Finnish grammar traditionally divides words into several sanatyypit, such as substantiivit (nouns), verbit (verbs), adjektiivit (adjectives), numeraalit (numerals), pronominit (pronouns), adverbit (adverbs), sekä konjunktiot, prepositiot (often represented in practice by postpositions), partikkelit and interjektiot. Each class has characteristic syntactic and morphological behavior, including typical inflection patterns, agreement rules, and permissible syntactic positions. The label sanatyypistä helps researchers and writers specify which word class is being discussed when describing these patterns.

In practice, sanatyypistä riippuen—or “depending on the word type”—the applicable rules can vary. For example, the way a word is inflected for case, number, or tense depends on its sanatyppi, and different classes may require different affixes or constructions. The phrase is common in linguistic descriptions of Finnish grammar, making explicit how the properties of words are conditioned by their part of speech.