substantivimuotojen

Substantivimuotojen is a Finnish term referring to the inflected forms of nouns. These forms express grammatical relations and features such as number, case, and possession, and they arise from a noun’s base stem through suffixes and occasional stem changes.

In Finnish, nouns inflect for two numbers: singular and plural. The case system is central to noun inflection, with a traditional set that includes nominative, genitive, partitive, and several location- and direction-related forms. Commonly cited cases include inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, essive, translative, and abessive; some grammars also count additional variants such as comitative or instructive. The exact endings depend on the noun’s stem, and vowel harmony and consonant gradation often influence the forms.

Possessive forms indicate ownership and are attached as suffixes to the noun. For example, talo (house) can become taloni (my house), talosi (your house), talomme (our house), talonne (your house, plural), and talonsa (their house). Possessive suffixes interact with other inflectional endings, producing forms that reflect both ownership and the noun’s case and number.

Understanding substantivimuotojen is essential for parsing Finnish sentences, since many grammatical relations are expressed through noun inflection rather than prepositions or articles. The system is productive but can be challenging due to stem changes, vowel harmony, and irregular nouns.