taivutusmuodon

Taivutusmuoto is a term used in Finnish grammar to refer to a word’s inflected form—the specific version of a word that signals its grammatical role in a sentence. It is distinct from the lemma, or perusmuoto, which is the dictionary form of the word. Taivutusmuoto changes according to word class (noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, participle) and expresses features such as number, case, tense, mood, and person.

For nouns, taivutusmuoto includes number (singular or plural) and various grammatical cases. Common cases in Finnish include inessive (inside), elative (from inside), illative (into), adessive (on/at), ablative (from), allative (onto), plus genitive and partitive. Adjectives and pronouns inflect in similar ways to agree with the nouns they modify or refer to. An example with the noun talo (house) shows forms such as nominative singular talo, genitive singular talon, inessive singular talossa, illative singular taloon, and talot in the plural.

Verbs form taivutusmuoto to reflect tense, mood, voice, person and number, and may also appear in participle forms. Examples include kirjoitan (I write, present indicative, first person singular), kirjoitin (I wrote), and kirjoita (write!, imperative). Finnish also uses conditional and potential moods, with forms like kirjoittaisin (I would write) or kirjoittaisi (he would write). Participles function as inflected forms used in compound tenses or as adjectives, such as kirjoittanut (written) or kirjoittava (writing).

Taivutusmuodon study is central to morphological analysis in Finnish, enabling the determination of a word’s role and relationships within a sentence. It explains how a single lexeme yields many surface forms to encode its grammatical function. See also taivutus, taivutusoppi, and perusmuoto.