nounimuoto

Nounimuoto is a term used in Finnish linguistics to describe any inflected form of a noun that signals grammatical information such as number and case. In Finnish grammar, nouns form a rich system of inflection, changing form to indicate singular or plural and to express the noun’s role in a sentence through various cases.

Finnish nouns do not have gender, but they take suffixes that mark number, case, and sometimes possession. The dictionary or base form of a Finnish noun is typically the singular nominative, but a noun’s forms can be numerous due to the case system. The concept of nounimuoto is important for describing how nouns function in syntax and for understanding how meaning is conveyed through morphological changes.

Example: the noun talo (house). Singular nominative: talo. Singular genitive: talon. Singular partitive: taloa. Plural nominative: talot. Plural inessive: taloissa. Plural genitive: talojen. Possessive forms attach as suffixes, for instance taloni means “my house,” and talossani means “in my house.” These examples illustrate how a single noun can appear in multiple nounimuoto forms to express different grammatical functions and grammatical relations.

In linguistic analysis, nounimuoto is used alongside taivutus (inflection) to describe a noun’s full repertoire of forms. It helps explain agreement with adjectives and verbs, syntactic roles, and how possession or location is encoded in Finnish without relying on fixed word order.