Talk:Finnish noun cases

Re-Locative cases

Although grammatically correct, the english phrase "Can I try on those pants in the window?" is ambiguous (it can refer to the LOCATION OF THE PANTS or the LOCATION OF THE TRYING ON). Because of the latter, it is also potentially ourtrageous, because in British English the word PANTS is always an abbreviation for UNDERPANTS. US english "PANTS" in British English are always known as "TROUSERS". The mind reels! So even in english construction one needs to be careful about such constructions. The proper english construction that avoids the ambiguity is exactly as per the finnish construction, with the use of a sub-clause, appropriately located.

-nne

Does anybody know if the form -nne was once a formal noun case in the history of Finnish and whether this form has a particular case name?

I mean the -nne form as it exists in words like jonnekin, minne and sinne which often have parallel standard case forms like jossakin, missa and sillä.

Also, I'd be grateful to know of other common words that carry this form.

Tom 08:41, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah.. answered it myself after a more careful dig on the net... its all explained here.

The Latin model for case names

The cases are named after the Latin model.

The names of the locative cases continue on this model. That is a Latin preposition and either the verb to be, esse or the feminine past participle of the verb carry/bring, lata.

The cases names that contain -essive suggest stationary position, while the case names that contain -lative suggest motion. For example the inessive case can be thought of as in + being, talossa - in the house, while the illative case can be thought of as in + carried, taloon - into the house. In the same way, abessive, ab - away + to be, talotta - without a house, and ablative, away + carried, talosta - from the house.

Renaming of article to "Finnish declension"

As the cases in this article are common declensions that affect not just nouns, but also pronouns, adjectives (including superlatives and comparatives) as well as numerals, it is proposed to move the article to a more inclusive new title Finnish declension bringing the article in line with similar Wikipedia articles such as English declension, German declension Czech declension, etc. The old article can redirect to the new one. Comments here please before the action is taken in 1 week's time. --Tom 15:21, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

What happened to this? Sounds reasonable . . . LookingGlass (talk) 17:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not a good name for the article. Declension deals with the endings only, the sounds and letters added on to achieve case differentiation. This article does not focus on declension, it focuses on the cases themselves and how they're used. In fact, the actual formation of the stems (the declension) is rather overlooked.

Fossils?

Is the prolative case really just a "fossil"? If so, it seems to have come to life once more in the computer age, with sähköpostitse (by e-mail) and netitse (via the internet)! Perhaps these should me mentioned in the article. --NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 15:28, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Prolative is no noun case, althought it is a noun suffix. It is neither a fossil, because it is used in actual Finnish. "Sähköpostitse" is right, but "netitse" sounds strange.--80.222.122.1 (talk) 11:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Elatiivi

Wouldn't it be more readily comprehensible to use the English preposition: "out of" instead of: "from(inside)" for the elatiivi? LookingGlass (talk) 17:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

• that's a matter of looking angle, isn't it (: --Sigmundur (talk) 22:36, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Hungarian

This is a great page; one could learn a lot about Finnish just by reading it. We need a page like this for the similar Hungarian language. I have looked through a lot of pages on Hungarian and can not find such a well organized or succinct chart anywhere in Wikipedia. In fact I cannot find Hungarian's 18 cases listed all together anywhere at all! We need a page called Hungarian Language Noun cases with the same content, most importantly the chart with case names and endings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.212.106.138 (talk) 22:32, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

prepositions .. found in Indo-European languages

"The cases generally replace the prepositions (in, to, at, ...) found in Indo-European languages" This is misleading, as "Indo-European languages" usually have a (somewhat similiar) case system , see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_nouns , replacing case declination with prepositions happens only quite 'recently' in indo-european languages such as English or Bulgarian. Thus adding a "Dubious" tag to the statement, should the word "Indo-European languages" be changed to "English" ? or should it be changed to "Analytic languages" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language#Analytic_languages ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.125.148.176 (talk) 22:43, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The cases don't "replace" anything. But, of course, there are similarities in the use of cases in many languages, postpositions in some languages and prepositions in others for semantic and syntactic functions. --Surfo (talk) 07:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Marginal cases

I wonder why essiivi and translatiivi are in Marginal case group. There are quite common in Finnish and in Uusi kielioppi they form a group called Roolisijat, Role case. 194.111.70.50 (talk) 11:04, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

That is clearly an error. Both essive and translative are alive and quite productive in Finnish. Even the other cases listed as marginal are by no means rare. In addition, there should be a note on the fact that cases are used in verb conjugation, too. 2nd infinitive instructive and 3rd infinitive abessive are quite frequent verb forms. --Surfo (talk) 13:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)