Yksikkömuotojen

Yksikkömuotojen refers to the singular inflectional forms of a word in Finnish grammar. The term describes how a word changes its ending to express number and grammatical case when referring to a single item. In contrast to monikko, which signals plural, yksikkömuotoja are the forms used for one thing. The concept is central to describing the morphology of nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals in dictionaries, grammars, and language-processing tools.

For nouns, the singular takes a form for each grammatical case, with the nominative singular usually serving as the dictionary form. Examples with the noun talo (house) include talo (nominative), talon (genitive), taloa (partitive), talossa (inessive), taloon (illative), talolla (adessive), talotta (abessive), talona (essive), and taloksi (translative). Adjectives agree with nouns in number and case, so a singular adjective form appears in phrases like uusi talo, uuden talon, uutta taloa, uudessa talossa. Pronouns similarly have distinct singular forms that change by case.

Understanding yksikkömuotojen is important in linguistic analysis, language teaching, and natural language processing, where pinpointing the singular forms of words aids in parsing syntax and producing grammatically correct text. Regular patterns and irregularities (such as stem changes or consonant gradation) influence the exact endings a word takes in its singular forms.

See also: monikko, taivutus, taivutusmuodot, Finnish grammar, morphology.