kielimuotoja

Kielimuotoja is the plural form of kielimuoto, a term used in linguistics to refer to the grammatical forms that a word can take. These forms express categories such as tense, mood, voice, case, number and person. In Finnish, kielimuotoja are especially prominent because the language relies heavily on inflection to convey grammatical relations, rather than fixed word order.

In general, kielimuotoja cover several word classes. Nouns and pronouns inflect for number and a large set of cases, allowing a single noun to appear in many different forms depending on its syntactic role. Common Finnish cases include nominative, genitive, partitive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, essive, translative, abessive and comitative, among others. Each case has its own endings and usage.

Verbs produce a variety of forms to mark tense, mood and voice. Finnish verb forms include present and past (imperfect) tenses, as well as perfect and pluperfect constructions. Moods such as indicative, conditional and imperative are used, and there is also a passive voice. Verbal kielimuotoja include infinitives and participles, which serve as independent forms and as components of finite clauses.

Adjectives and numerals also form kielimuotoja by agreeing with the noun in number and case, and in some contexts they take additional inflection. Pronouns, too, inflect for person and number.

In grammar resources and dictionaries, kielimuotoja are listed with their stems and endings. Studying these forms helps explain how meaning is encoded through morphology and how grammatical relations are expressed in Finnish without relying solely on word order.