Taivutuskokeilla

Taivutuskokeilla on termi used in linguistics to describe the systematic testing of a word’s inflectional forms. The concept refers to generating and verifying the various morphologically marked forms a word can take in a given language, typically focusing on how a lemma changes to express case, number, tense, mood, and other grammatical categories. Although the term is common in Finnish linguistic tradition, it is applicable to many morphologically rich languages.

In practice, taivutuskokeita are used to document and analyze inflectional paradigms for dictionaries, grammars, and language descriptions. They are also employed in language teaching to illustrate how words inflect, and in computational linguistics to develop or evaluate morphological analyzers, lemmatizers, and language models. By examining regular patterns and irregularities, researchers identify stem changes, allomorphs, and rule exceptions.

Methodologically, taivutuskokeilla begins with selecting a lemma, then generating the standard inflection forms across relevant categories. Researchers test forms such as nominative, genitive, and partitive, as well as inessive, elative, and allative cases, to map the full paradigm. Irregular forms and stem changes are recorded and analyzed. Data are often cross-validated with corpora, native speaker consultation, and existing dictionaries. Fieldwork may reveal dialectal variants that broaden the inflectional inventory.

Example (Finnish noun koira): nominatiivi koira, genetiivi koiran, partitiivi koiraa, inessiivi koirassa, elatiivi koirasta, allatiivi koiralle. Taivutuskokeita thus illustrate a typical noun’s inflectional paradigm. See also taivutus, morfologia, kielitiede.