sanakirjaformit

Sanakirjaformi, or dictionary form, is a term used in linguistics and lexicography to denote the form of a word that serves as its lemma or headword in dictionaries. It is the canonical form to which the inflected or derived forms of the word are linked and under which the word is looked up. The exact definition of the dictionary form varies by language and word class.

In many languages, the dictionary form is the form used for indexing and reference in dictionaries. For nouns, this is typically the nominative singular; for verbs, the basic dictionary form is usually the 1st infinitive; for adjectives, the positive or base form is used. In Finnish, sanakirjaformi is the form you would find as the entry in a standard dictionary: for example, talo (house) as a noun, kirjoittaa (to write) as the verb, iso (big) as the adjective. Inflected forms such as talon, talossa, taloja or kirjoittaa, kirjoitan, kirjoitetut, and iso, isompi, suurin are derived from the sanakirjaformi.

The concept is analogous to the lemma in other languages and lies at the core of lexicography and natural language processing. Lemmatization, the process of reducing words to their sanakirjaformi, supports efficient indexing, search, and cross-linguistic analysis. In practice, the dictionary form provides a stable reference point across inflected languages and aids in organizing vocabulary for learners, dictionaries, and computational tools.