THE NUMBER SYSYTEM OF FINNSH
The number distinction system in Finnish is similar to that in English; Finnish has only two grammatical numbers, singular and plural. Both suppletion and affixation are employed in Finnish, and suppletion is used for pronouns, personal and demonstrative, and affixation is for regular nouns.
Personal Pronouns
Singular Plural
1st person minA me
2nd person sinA te
3rd person hAn he
Regular Nouns; ëtaloí (house) as an example
talo ëhouse (nominative singular)í / talo-t ë(the) houses (nominative plural)
In terms of markedness, singular forms have no ending while plurals have ë-tí ending, and the, plural is more marked than singular.
Adjectives and demonstrative pronouns also have number distinction.
iso auto ëa big car (Karlsson 71)í
big.nom.sg. car.nom.sg.
iso-t auto-t ë(the) big cars (Karlsson 71)í
big.nom.-pl. car.nom.-pl.
tuo punainen kukka ëthat red flower (Karlsson 71)í
that.nom.sg. red.nom.sg. flower.nom.sg.
nuo punaise-t kukka-t ëthose red flowers (Karlsson 71)í
those(plural form of ëtuoí) red.nom.-pl. flower.nom.-pl.
Adjectives, when used as predicates, also have to make a number distinction according to the subject that they predicate in the sentence.
riitta ja pekka ov-at mukav-i-a ëriitta and Pekka are nice (Sulkala 338).í
Riita.nom. and Pekka.nom. be.pres.-3pl. nice-pl.-par
As Finnish employs the Subject-Verb agreement system, verbs also have to agree with the number of the subject. When the subject is a personal pronoun, this system works with no problem. If we take the verb, ëole- (to be),í for example,
auto on kadu-lla ëThe car is in the street (Karlsson 62).í
car.nom.sg. be.pres.-3sg.(0) street.sg.-ell.
auto-t o-vat kadu-lla ëThe cars are in the street (Karlsson 62).í
car.nom.-pl. be.pres.-3pl. street.sg.-ell.
we can see that the verb is marked by the suffix, ë-vat,í 3rd person plural marker, when the subject is plural while there is no suffix on the verb when the subject is singular. Although Finnish has different verb endings for different persons, we can say that, at least when the subject is 3rd person, plural is marked and singular is unmarked in verb forms.
In the following case, however, the Subject-Verb agreement does not work, and the verb form is singular even though the subject is plural.
kadu-lla on auto-j-a ëThere are cars in the street (Karlsson 78).í
street.sg.-ell be.pres.-3sg. car-pl.-par
(The plural marker ë-ií turns into ë-jí when placed within a word.)
In some cases, verbs in Finnish do not distinguish numbers, and the distinction of numbers made by verbs relates to the definiteness and the indefiniteness of the subject. If the subject is definite, as the example, ëauto-t o-vat kadu-lla (the cars are in the street),í the nominative case is used for the subject. If, on the other hand, the subject is indefinite, as in ëkadu-lla on auto-j-a (there are cars in the street),í the subject is in the partitive case. In Finnish, only the nominative subjects can trigger the Subject-Verb agreement, by which verbs distinguish numbers, but the partitive subjects do not.
Then, when we think of the ëmarkedness hierarchyí in Finnish, we have to take definiteness and indefiniteness into consideration. As the nominative case do not require any markings while the partitive case needs additional marker, besides the plural marker, the number of the marking morphemes is different according to the definiteness / indefiniteness of the subject.
The hierarchy of markedness in Finnish will be,
definite singular < indefinite singular < definite plural < indefinite plural
(the numbers in the ( ) are the number of additional morpheme besides the noun root.)
In addition to the number of marking morphemes, indefinite plurals seems to be more marked, compared with other three forms, through the irregularity of the verb forms. As the indefinite plural subjects do not trigger the Subject-Verb agreement, this irregularity seems to give additional marking to the indefinite plural forms.
Keys
A: low front lax unrounded vowel (as in ëaplleí in English)
sg.: singular, 3sg.: 3rd person singular
pl.: plural, 3pl.: 3rd person plural
pres.: present tense
nom. nominative case
par.: partitive case
ell.: ellative case (which corresponds to the English prepositional phrase, ëin + noun phrase.í)
Works Cited
Karlsson, Fred. Finnish Grammar .Werner Soderstorm Osakeyhito. Helsinki, 1982.
Sulkala, Helena. Finnish, Descriptive Grammars. Routledge. London, New York. 1992.
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Revised April 2, 1999