sõnal

Sõnal is the adessive singular form of the Estonian noun sõna, meaning word. In Estonian grammar, forms like sõnal are created by adding a case ending to the base noun; the adessive form typically expresses location or relation, roughly corresponding to “on the word” or “at the word” in English.

In ordinary usage, sõna refers to a unit of language or a term. Sõnal, as a word-form, is encountered in sentences where the speaker wants to indicate a relation to the word itself rather than to the subject in the nominative case. This form is common in formal or literary contexts and appears in a variety of constructions that require the adessive case.

Grammatically, sõnal is part of the noun’s inflectional paradigm and coexists with other case forms such as nominative sõna, genitive sõna, and partitive sõna. The adessive pattern for this noun reflects regular Estonian inflection rules for singular nouns ending in -a, with the final suffix -l marking the adessive.

Example: Sõnal on tähendus. This translates roughly to “The word has meaning” or more freely, “In the word there is meaning,” illustrating how the adessive form can function in a predicative sense. While not as common in everyday speech as nominative usage, sõnal appears in academic, linguistic, and literary texts where precise case marking matters.

See also: sõna, Estonian grammar, noun inflection, adessive case.