ttä

Tä is not a standalone word in Finnish, but the string appears most prominently as part of the common verb-ending series that includes -taa, -tää, -ttää, and their variants. In linguistic descriptions, these endings are treated as productive derivational suffixes that form new verbs from stems, often with nuanced meanings related to making, causing, or performing an action. The exact sense of a verb built with -ttaa/-ttää depends on the base it attaches to, so there is no single universal meaning for the suffix itself.

Morphology and usage

The -tt- formations are a characteristic feature of Finnish verb morphology. They attach to stems to yield verbs whose action is typically related to producing, causing, or causing a state related to the base term. The suffix has several allomorphs (such as -taa, -tää, -ttää, -yttää) that align with phonological rules and the stem’s vowel harmony. Because many Finnish verbs undergo stem changes and vowel alternations, the pronunciation and written form of the final syllables can vary in concert with the root.

Common examples

Two widely encountered verbs with this family are kirjoittaa (to write) and näyttää (to show). Both exhibit the -ttaa/-ttä/-yttää pattern in their infinitive forms, illustrating how the suffix participates in forming core lexical items. The semantics of each derived verb are driven by its root, not by a fixed meaning of the suffix alone.

See also

Finnish verb morphology, derivational suffixes in Finnish, causative constructions in Finnic languages.

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