Sijamuotit

Sijamuotit are the grammatical case forms used in Finnish to mark the relations of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives to other words in a sentence. They are expressed by suffixes attached to the noun stem and reflect functions such as subject, object, possession, location, direction, and state. The system is highly productive and interacts with vowel harmony and, in some cases, consonant gradation, which can alter the stem before affixing the case endings.

Finnish typically describes the noun system as consisting of a core set of cases, supplemented by several locational and functional forms. Commonly cited groups include the nominative (the base form, often used for the subject), genitive (possession or close association), and partitive (partial or indefinite object). A large subset covers location and movement: inessive (inside), elative (out of), illative (into), adessive (on), ablative (from), and allative (onto). Additional cases express state or change of state: essive (as, in the role of) and translative (become). The abessive marks absence, and some descriptions include comitative (with) in discussions of the system. Some grammars also treat the accusative as a distinct object form in certain contexts.

In practice, the choice of case depends on the noun’s syntactic role and the meaning of the sentence. Endings vary with phonology and may involve stem alternations in some words. For example, the noun talo (house) can appear as talo (nominative), talon (genitive), taloa (partitive), talossa (inessive), talosta (elative), taloon (illative), talolla (adessive), talolta (ablative), talolle (allative), talona (essive), taloksi (translative), or talotta (abessive), illustrating how a single noun integrates multiple sijamuotit to convey different relations.