Taivutusmääritykseen

Taivutusmääritykseen is a Finnish linguistic concept referring to the process of determining the correct inflection for a word. It describes how a word is assigned to an inflectional paradigm and how the appropriate endings are chosen to express grammatical categories such as case, number, tense, or mood.

In Finnish morphology, taivutusmääritys involves classifying a word into a taivutusluokka (inflection class) and applying a taivutusmalli (inflection pattern). The decision depends on factors such as the word’s part of speech, stem characteristics, and phonological rules like vowel harmony and consonant gradation. Different word classes—nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs—have distinct paradigms, and irregular forms may require special treatment within the taivutusmääritys framework.

Practically, taivutusmääritys is central to descriptive grammar, language teaching, dictionary work, and computational linguistics. It enables the automatic generation or analysis of a word’s full paradigm from a lemma or stem, supporting tasks such as parsing, spell checking, and language learning tools. While many forms follow regular patterns, irregularities and dialectal variation pose challenges to consistent taivutusmääritys.

See also: taivutus, taivutusluokka, taivutusmalli, taivutusparadigma, morphological analysis.