päätteiseen

päätteiseen is a Finnish word that translates to "terminal" or "ending" in English. It is commonly used in a grammatical context to refer to the case endings of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns in the Finnish language. Finnish is an agglutinative language, meaning it uses suffixes to express grammatical functions such as case, number, and possession. The term päätteiseen specifically refers to these suffixes that are attached to the end of a word stem.

These case endings are crucial for conveying the grammatical role of a word within a sentence. For example, the nominative case, which is the basic form of a word, often has no ending or a very simple one. Other cases, like the genitive (possessive), partitive (partitive or indefinite), illative (into), inessive (in), elative (from inside), allative (onto), adessive (on), ablative (from outside), translative (becoming), factive (as), and abessive (without), are marked by distinct päätteiseen. The correct use of these endings is essential for constructing grammatically correct Finnish sentences.

Beyond grammar, the term päätteiseen can also be used in a more general sense to denote something that is at the end or a conclusion. For instance, it could refer to the end of a period of time or the concluding part of a process. However, its most frequent and specific application is within the field of Finnish linguistics and grammar.