tyhjiö

Tyhjiä is the plural partitive form of the Finnish adjective tyhjä, which means "empty." As an inflected adjective, tyhjiä is used to modify nouns in the partitive plural and occurs in syntactic contexts that require the partitive case, such as expressions of incomplete quantity, negation, ongoing actions, or unspecified amounts.

In grammar, tyhjä declines according to Finnish adjective inflection patterns; tyhjiä corresponds to the base tyhj- plus the partitive plural ending -iä. It appears in phrases like tyhjiä pulloja ("empty bottles") or tyhjiä laatikoita ("empty boxes"). The form is also used when an object is only partially affected or when number and totality are unspecified: for example, negative constructions may prefer the partitive plural (Ei ollut tyhjiä pulloja — "There were no empty bottles.").

Etymologically, tyhjä derives from Proto-Finnic roots and is cognate with similar forms in other Finnic languages. In idiomatic use, related expressions include puhua tyhjää ("to talk empty words" / "to talk nonsense"). Pronunciation follows Finnish phonology and is roughly represented as /ˈtyhjiæ/, with front vowels and a palatalized cluster.

As a common adjective form, tyhjiä is a routine part of Finnish morphology and daily speech, illustrating how case and number interact in Uralic languages to convey aspectual, quantitative, and syntactic nuance.