yksimuotoisen

Yksimuotoisen is the genitive singular form of the Finnish adjective yksimuotoinen, which literally means “single-form” or “one-form.” The adjective describes a linguistic item that has only one inflectional form or a single paradigm. In typological or descriptive linguistics, yksimuotoinen is used to discuss words, affixes, or morphological systems that do not alternate across person, number, or case. The phrase yksimuotoisen sanan refers to “the single form of a word” in contexts that analyze morphology.

Inflection and usage: Like other Finnish adjectives, yksimuotoinen inflects to agree with the noun in number and case. Examples include: nominative singular yksimuotoinen sana; genitive singular yksimuotoisen sanan; partitive singular yksimuotoista sanaa; nominative plural yksimuotoiset sanat; genitive plural yksimuotoisten sanojen. The term is mainly encountered in scholarly writing rather than everyday language, where most words show more than a single form.

Usage in description: The term is used to classify words whose morphology remains constant across contexts, in contrast to polyform or highly inflected words. Example usage: “Tämä on yksimuotoinen sana” (This is a single-form word). The phrase “yksimuotoisen sanan taivutus” refers to the study of how such a word would be declined if it had more than one form; in practice the description remains theoretical, reflecting a specific analytical perspective.

Etymology and related terms: The adjective is formed from yksi (one) + muoto (form) with the suffix -nen. Related concepts in Finnish linguistics include monimuotoinen (multiform) and taivutus (inflection). The term is primarily a tool for academic discussion of morphological paradigms rather than common usage.