Finnish noun cases
nominals, which include pronouns, adjectives, and numerals, are declined in a large number of grammatical cases, whose uses and meanings are detailed here. See also Finnish grammar.
Many meanings expressed by case markings in Finnish correspond to phrases or expressions containing prepositions in most Indo-European languages. Because so much information is coded in Finnish through its cases, the use of adpositions is more limited than in English, for instance.
List of Finnish cases
Note regarding the examples: Finnish has no grammatical gender nor definite and indefinite articles. Thus, context may be required to get an accurate translation.Grammatical cases
The grammatical cases perform core linguistic functions such as signaling who initiates an action or the object of an action.Nominative
The basic form of the noun.Genitive
Characteristic ending: -n possibly modified by consonant gradation: mäki → mäen, talo → talon. For the nouns and adjectives that have two vowel stems, the weak vowel stem comes from the genitive singular.Accusative
This case marks direct objects. The accusative indicates telicity; that is, the object has been finalized or the intended action is done. Note that a morphologically distinct accusative case exists in Finnish only for the following pronouns:In contrast, regular nouns do not have a distinct accusative case. Instead, singular direct objects look like the genitive in direct address and in the nominative with both imperatives and passives. Plural direct objects always appear in the nominative plural.
Traditionally, Finnish grammars have considered, on syntactic grounds, the accusative to be a case unto itself, despite its being identical to the nominative or genitive case. The recently published major Finnish grammar Iso suomen kielioppi takes a morphological point of view and does not list the accusative except for the personal pronouns and kuka, while at the same time acknowledging the argument for the traditional view. The existence or nonexistence of an accusative case in Finnish thus depends on one's point of view. Historically, the similarity of the accusative and genitive endings is coincidental. The older accusative ending was -m, but in modern Finnish an m has become an n when it is the last sound of a word.
Partitive
Characteristic ending: -ta/-tä, where the 't' elides if intervocalic. The consonant stem of a noun comes from the partitive singular. Otherwise the ending is added to the strong vowel stem.The formation of the partitive plural is rather variable, but the basic principle is to add '-i-' to the inflecting stem, followed by the '-a' partitive ending. However, in a similar way to verb imperfects, the '-i-' can cause changes to the final vowel of the stem, leading to an apparent diversity of forms.
Locative cases
The most prototypical function of locative cases is to indicate location, as the name suggests. However, they are also used in a range of syntactic constructions, much like prepositions in Indo-European languages. In Finnish, the suffix -lla as a locative means "on ", but may function to code the idea of "being used as an instrument", e.g. kirjoitan kynällä "I write with a pen".Two different kinds of suffixes are used, the internal locatives and the external locatives.
The word in a locative case refers to the verb, for example, in Sovitan housuja ikkunassa the word ikkunassa "in the window" refers to the verb sovitan "I try on", not to the adjacent noun housuja "pants". The sentence reads out as "I'm in the window, trying on pants". However, in context due to the instrumental nature of the window and the word order, the sentence stands for "I'm trying on pants in the window".
Internal locatives
Inessive
Characteristic ending -ssa/-ssä added to the weak vowel stem.Elative
Characteristic ending -sta/-stä added to the weak vowel stem.Illative
The ending is usually -Vn, where V indicates the preceding vowel of the stem. Singular forms use the strong stem form. In cases where the genitive stem already ends in a long vowel the ending is -seen and -siin. However, for words of one syllable the ending is always -hVn and this form is also used in plural forms where the plural stem already contains a vowel immediately before the plural i.External locatives
Adessive
Characteristic ending -lla/-llä added to the weak vowel stem.Ablative
Characteristic ending -lta/-ltä added to the weak vowel stem.Allative
Characteristic ending -lle added to the weak vowel stem."General locatives" and other cases
The name "general locatives" is sometimes used of the essive and translative cases because their oldest meanings imply that they have been used to indicate location.Essive
Characteristic ending -na. If the noun or adjective has two vowel stems, the strong vowel stem comes from the essive singular. NB the consonant stem used to be quite common in the essive, and some nouns and adjectives still have this feature.Translative
Characteristic ending -ksi added to the weak vowel stem. The ending is -kse- before a possessive suffix.Instructive
Characteristic ending -n added usually to plural stem.Abessive
Characteristic ending -tta.Comitative
Characteristic ending -ne. This ending is added to the plural stem, even if the noun is singular, which may cause ambiguity.Others
Prolative
The prolative is almost exclusively found in a few fossilised forms in modern Finnish. Its meaning is "by way of", some common examples beingThe Finnish locative system
The Finnish language has eight locative cases, and some Eastern dialects symmetrify the system with the exessive case. These can be classified according to a three-way contrast of entering, residing in, and exiting a state, and there are three different systems of these cases. This system is similar to that of Estonian, and can be reconstructed to the Proto-Finnic locative system.| System | Entering | Residing in | Exiting |
| Inner | -Vn "into" | -ssa "in" | -sta "from " |
| Outer | -lle "onto" | -lla "on" | -lta "from " |
| State | -ksi "into as" | -na "as" | -nta "from being as" |
It is immediately noticeable from the table that the "exiting" forms have the same consonant as the "residing" forms added with the Finnish partitive case ending -ta. This may be traced into a Proto-Uralic ablative ending, which is preserved in what is now the partitive case. Also, the Finnish system is somewhat simpler than in the Hungarian language, where there is a separate system for "to the top", "on top", and "off from the top".
The exessive case is not used in standard Finnish, but it is found in Savo Finnish and Karelian.