selkän

Selkään is a Finnish grammar term referring to the illative form of the noun selkä, which means back. In Finnish, the illative expresses motion into or toward a destination or surface. The form selkään is produced by combining the stem selk- with the illative suffix -ään, resulting in selkään to indicate “into the back” or “to the back.” As a grammatical form, selkään functions as a case marker rather than a standalone lexical item; its meaning depends on the verb and context of the sentence.

In usage, selkään appears in sentences where movement toward or into the back region is being described, or where the back is treated as a destination in a figurative or descriptive sense. The illative is one of several directional cases in Finnish that together convey distance, direction, and manner of motion. Because selän back and selkään illative share the same root, the form is often encountered in linguistic descriptions, dictionaries, and language-learning materials dealing with Finnish case systems.

The broader topic of selkään sits within Finnish morphology and syntax, illustrating how location and direction are encoded in the language through case endings. It is primarily of interest to students of Finnish grammar, linguists studying Finnic languages, and readers seeking to understand how body-part terms interact with directional marking in Finnish. See also the illative case, selkä, and Finnish noun morphology for a fuller contextual understanding.