Tiiviydyt

Tiiviydyt are a class of phonological and morphological contractions found in the Finnish language. The word stems from the noun tiiviydys, meaning “tightening” or “contraction.” In grammatical terminology, tiiviydyt describe a process by which two adjacent morphemes or phonemes merge into a single, more compact form. Although Finnish is generally conservative with respect to word boundaries, these contractions appear regularly in speech and in some literary genres, especially in colloquial and informal contexts.

Typical examples include the contraction of the with‑word “on” (is) in verb phrases with participles, as in “hän on" (he/she is) becoming “hän on" with elision in fast speech, which can be transcribed as “hän on“ → “hän on”. Another frequent occurrence is the combination of the possessive suffixes with third‑person pronouns, where “ni” (two‑person plural) and “ni” (two‑person plural possessive) may contract in rapid utterances to “ni” → “ni”. The contraction of “-an” and “-en” in some verb stems can produce forms such as “men" instead of “menä".

In written Finnish, tiiviydyt are usually avoided or marked with an apostrophe in typeset records that aim to reflect spoken language. Linguists study tiiviydyt to understand prosodic constraints, phonotactic rules, and the interaction between morphology and phonology in Uralic languages. While tiiviydyt are not productive in the sense of forming new words, they remain an important feature of Finnish prosody, reflecting the language’s tendency toward streamlined speech in specific syntactic environments.