taivuttamissäännöt

Taivuttamissäännöt, in Finnish grammar, refer to the rules that govern how words change form to express grammatical meaning through inflection. They describe how Finnish words alter their endings or undergo stem changes to indicate category such as number, case, tense, mood, and negation. The rules apply to the main inflecting parts of speech in Finnish—nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, and verbs—and are used to produce the correct inflected forms in context.

Nouns and adjectives inflect for number (singular or plural) and for a large set of cases, commonly presented as about 15 forms such as nominative, genitive, partitive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, essive, translative, abessive, instructive, and comitative. The endings attach to a stem, with vowel harmony determining the vowels in the suffix. In some inflectional forms, the stem may undergo consonant gradation or other alterations. An example is talo (house), which yields talossa (inessive) and taloon (illative), as well as taloa (partitive).

Verbs also follow taivuttamissäännöt, with finite forms showing person and number, and with tense, mood, voice, and often negation expressed through endings or auxiliary constructions. Finnish verb conjugation is organized into classes and includes irregular forms.

Phonological processes such as vowel harmony and consonant gradation play a central role in many taivuttamissäännöt, influencing which suffixes or stem changes occur. Because of irregularities, loanwords, and proper nouns, some inflected forms do not fit the standard patterns. Resources like Finnish grammar handbooks and dictionaries provide comprehensive inflection tables and rules.