taivutusrakenteessa

Taivutusrakenne, or inflectional structure, refers to the systematic pattern by which Finnish words change form to express grammatical meaning. It is a core aspect of Finnish morphology and is characterized by agglutinative word formation, where meaning is carried mainly through suffixes attached to a base, with occasional stem modifications such as consonant gradation and the influence of vowel harmony.

For nouns and adjectives, taivutus expresses number and case. Finnish nouns typically distinguish singular and plural and a large set of cases (nominative, genitive, partitive, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, essive, translative, abessive, among others). For example, the noun talo (house) forms talon (genitive), taloa (partitive), talossa (inessive), taloon (illative), talolle (allative), talolla (adessive), talolta (ablative), talona (essive), taloksi (translative), taloilla (plural adessive), and taloja (plural partitive); talot is the plural nominative. Adjectives agree with the noun in number and case.

In verbs, taivutus marks person and number in the present tense and also governs tense, mood, and voice in finite forms. Common present-tense endings are used to indicate person: -n (1st person singular), -t (2nd person singular), with no ending for 3rd person singular, -mme (1st person plural), -tte (2nd person plural), and -vat/-vät (3rd person plural). Finnish also forms past, perfect, and conditional forms through additional suffixes and sometimes auxiliary verbs. Negation uses the separate negative auxiliary ei/enkä with the main verb in a short form.

The taivutusrakenne interacts with phonology through vowel harmony and consonant gradation, and irregular forms exist for some words. Understanding taivutusrakenne is essential for grammar, language learning, and linguistic analysis.