lõppudes

Lõppudes is a term used in Estonian linguistics to refer to the set of word endings that attach to a stem to signal grammatical function. In this context, lõppudes encompasses suffixes that indicate relations such as case, number, mood, tense, and voice. The concept is central to understanding Estonian morphology, because the language relies on a rich system of inflection where a single stem can acquire many different endings.

In practice, discussions of lõppudes focus on how endings alter a word’s form and meaning, allowing speakers to express syntactic and semantic relations without separate words. Endings can reflect grammatical category (for example, whether a noun is singular or plural, or which case it is in) and, for verbs, aspects such as tense, mood, or agreement with a subject. Because Estonian is an agglutinative language, a single word form may comprise a stem plus multiple endings, each contributing a specific piece of information.

Lõppudes is commonly encountered in grammar descriptions, educational resources, and linguistic analyses. It serves as a useful concept for organizing how word forms are generated and how they function within sentences. For learners, mastering the most frequent endings is a practical entry point to understanding Estonian morphology, while for researchers it provides a framework for comparing inflectional patterns across languages.

See also: Estonian grammar, inflection, morphology, suffix.