Finnish declension

I noticed only now that you have dropped nominative-accusative singular forms from your formula. In Finnish grammar accusative is a slightly complicated issue. When I went to school in the 1970's we were taught that there's no accusative in Finnish, but we use nominative and genitive instead, depending on the mode of the verb. Active forms except imperative use genitive and passive forms plus imperative use nominative. Current convention is that there's indeed an accusative but it looks in singular like nominative or genitive depending on verb mode. In plural it always looks like nominative. I think both nominative-accusative and genitive-accusative should be shown in the table as they are now shown e.g. in the Finnish section of wrap.

This is slightly outside the topic, but for some reason the linguists do not recognize partitive-accusative, although an object in a sentence describing incomplete action is in partitive:

Ostin auton

I bought a car.

Ostan auton

I will buy a car. (the action is regarded as complete, because the mind is set)

Osta auto!

Buy a car!

But:

Ostan autoa.

I'm in the process of buying a car

From a historical perspective there certainly is a separate accusative case. In Proto-Uralic, the accusative had the ending -m, while the genitive had the ending -n. In the later history of Finnish, final -m became -n, and you can still see this in many words like kytkin, which really end in -m- but this becomes -n when there is no ending. This change, of course, ended up making the accusative and genitive look the same. But they were still separate cases, and it's only a coincidence that they look alike in modern Finnish. And of course, some pronouns really do have a separate accusative ending in -t, and in the plural of all words the nominative and accusative look the same while the genitive is different.

So really, I'm not sure if the conventional approach makes sense. It's confusing form and function. The form of the accusative has the ending -n in the singular (or sometimes -t). But as a function of indicating an object, sometimes the form of the nominative is used, sometimes the accusative, sometimes also the partitive, and occasionally even other cases. The table that I created considers only the form: the ending -n is the accusative form, while the form with no ending is the nominative form. Which form is used when is a part of the grammar of Finnish, and doesn't really belong in a declension table I think.

A nice way to compare this is to look at some verbs in Icelandic. Icelandic has four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. The dative is used for the indirect object, some prepositions, as well as for certain verbs. Most verbs take an object in the accusative case, but some take an object in the dative case, and this is very much like the situation in Finnish where you sometimes use the accusative form and sometimes the nominative. I don't think anyone would ever consider, based on this, that the dative case is really also the accusative case in Icelandic; that the accusative really has two different forms. Instead, grammars state that sometimes you use the accusative to indicate an object, and sometimes the dative.

So I kind of see it the same way for Finnish. Instead of saying that the accusative sometimes has the same form of the nominative, I say that after certain verb forms, the object appears in the nominative form instead of the accusative form. This is the more historically accurate way to say it, but it still makes sense for modern Finnish.

Please read what Finnish Wikipedia has to say about akkusatiivi. There are two mainstream theories: either there is an accusative which has two forms in singular or there is no accusative at all for nouns. Wiktionary should be about current usage and it should be understandable without knowledge of Proto-Uralic.

PS. The Kotus seems to have accepted the point of view that there's no accusative for nouns [1].

My Finnish is not good enough to read that, I'm afraid.

The statement that there is no accusative at all is not tenable. Not just historically, but also currently. The nominative, accusative and genitive are used in totally different ways, and they can never be mixed up. If you have a form and you're not sure if it's a genitive or accusative, there's a very easy test: just make it plural. It works in reverse too: if you're not sure if a form is nominative or accusative plural, just make it singular.

What is being described here is really something called syncretism: two forms that are formally different end up looking the same. Syncretism is not unusual and can be found in many languages. Even in other parts of Finnish it's visible: seitsemän has syncretism between nominative, accusative and genitive singular. Does this mean that seitsemän has no accusative and genitive at all? Of course not! It just means that they all look the same. Another example is Latin, where the dative and ablative plural forms are always identical. Again, that doesn't mean that Latin has only one of those cases, not two. It just means that two cases have forms that are always the same. And look at English fish. Its plural form is the same, but that doesn't mean it has no plural form!

In Finnish declension, there is syncretism between accusative and genitive singular, and between nominative and accusative plural. The fact that it applies differently in singular and plural is why you can't say there is no accusative case. What you can say is that the accusative form always looks like another case, but that's different. It's not the same as saying that the accusative doesn't exist.

And I'm not sure what understanding of Proto-Uralic has to do with the current situation. Can you explain what part of the new table, which does not include the nominative as an alternative accusative form, would be confusing for users? I actually think it's more confusing to leave it the way it was. It makes it look like you can always use both forms, which is clearly not the case. They can never be swapped around. You always have to use the accusative in one situation, and the nominative in another.

"So really, I'm not sure if the conventional approach makes sense." "My Finnish is not good enough to read that, I'm afraid." That's pretty bold, isn't it. You deny the thinking and theories of a whole school of linguists without being able to read the language! More seriously, the confusing part is that the reader might be lead to believe that there is a clearly defined accusative in Finnish - which there isn't. Instead of building theories of our own, we should stick with either of the mainstream theories.

Why is there not a clearly defined accusative? It seems pretty clear to me.

The question "why" beats me. I don't know. The Uralic -m accusative has disappeared somewhere in the course of the centuries. I translate here what Kotus has to say about the issue:

A noun has about 140 inflected forms (when forms created with clitics are not counted): there are 12 cases both in singular and plural, each of which may be combined with a possessive suffix which is different for each person. Instructive and comitative exist only in plural form, of which the latter always requires a possessive suffix. Accusative is not a noun case.

This is what Wikipedia says:

A partial object is always in partitive. Old Uralic accusative with -m ending has in modern Finnish transformed to resemble genitive. The case of total objective may also resemble nominative. In Finnish grammatic tradition it has been customary to call both forms of total object "accusative"; they have been referred to as "genitive-accusative" and "nominative-accusative". Additionally the personal pronouns and the pronoun kuka/ken have a separate accusative form, ending with "-t"; this form is being used both as genitive and nominative accusative.

Another principle followed by e.g. Auli Hakulinen's "Large Finnish Grammar" of 2004 (quoted above) is to use the term accusative only of the accusative forms of the personal pronouns and the pronoun kuka/ken: only these forms differ from genitive and nominative forms. The problem with this interpretation is, however, that genitive and the accusative which in modern language looks like genitive are both etymologically and by meaning separate cases.

To sum up, there are two theories regarding the existence of accusative for nouns in modern Finnish: either there is one, and it has two parallel forms in singular or there is none.

The Uralic -m didn't disappear, I don't know where you got that from. It simply became -n through regular sound change, just like in many other words. Some examples where a former -m has become -n:

• Nouns like kytkin, which still have -m- when it's not final.
• The superlative forms of nouns. Here, too, the -m- resurfaces when it's not final; the -p- was transferred from the comparative form, so it wasn't there originally.
• The first-person singular verb ending -n. The first and second-person verb endings actually align with the plural forms and with the pronouns:
  • -'n, -mme, minä, me.
  • -t, -tte, sinä (an example of the ti > si change I mentioned on your talk page), te.

Kotus is simply wrong there. There is an accusative case, it just looks the same as the genitive. Since it's clear that the current accusative wasn't originally the same as the genitive, there must have been an accusative originally. So if there is no accusative anymore, then when did it disappear? Did the ancestor of Finnish just suddenly no longer have an accusative case when the -m ending became -n? That's nonsense.

And what about this sentence you quoted: "The problem with this interpretation is, however, that genitive and the accusative which in modern language looks like genitive are both etymologically and by meaning separate cases." This is exactly the point I am making. If Wikipedia can make it, why can't I?

I may have been expressing myself badly, but let's try again. Let's agree that Kotus is wrong, but then we must choose the other mainstream theory. It's in fact the one that I've supported from the very beginning: there's an accusative, which has two singular forms. The point of view that thre should be an accusative with only genitive-looking form is your own.

I've expressed that point of view because I don't understand why the nominative-like form is called an accusative as well. What makes it an accusative form and not just a nominative form?

"Why is the nominative-like form called an accusative as well?"

I know I'm walking on thin ice, but the thinking may depend on the fact that in case of personal pronouns (the only true accusative forms that everyone seems to agree on) the accusative is used as equivalent to both nominative and genitive accusatives. At a slave market one might say ostan orjan/ osta orja but if one uses hän instead of orja, it becomes ostan hänet/ osta hänet. The grammatical case must be the same both if the object is a noun or if it is a pronoun - ergo, there's a nominative accusative form. In the end, the existence of nominative-accusative is at least partially a question of convention, but this is anyway the convention that is widely agreed upon.

Ok, that is an argument that does make some sense to me at least. The fact that the nominative of a noun becomes the accusative of a pronoun shows that there is a functional connection between the two.

But then, if we include them both under "accusative" then people may think that they're equivalent and interchangeable. We do the same with alternative genitive and partitive plural forms, after all. So I propose changing the table a bit, so that the "accusative" line becomes two rows high, and have two sub-rows each showing the two possible types of accusative. What should we call those sub-rows? Is the imperative the only case where the second accusative (the one like the nominative) is used, or are there others?

Yes, nominative-accusative is used with total objective (partial objective is always in partitive) in all positive passive forms:

ostetaan auto

on ostettu auto

ostettiin auto

oli ostettu auto

ostettaisiin auto

olisi ostettu auto

ostettakoon auto

olkoon ostettu auto

ostettaneen auto

lienee auto

In addition 3rd infinitive instructive both in active and passive, agent participle and negative participle require nominative accusative. Imperative takes genitive accusative in third person.

This is really too long to explain in the template. I think they should be called "nominative-accusative" and "genitive-accusative" which are direct translations of the Finnish grammatical terms nominatiiviakkusatiivi and genetiiviakkusatiivi. The accusative used to occupy two rows before, so that is no problem. Actually, the accusative box could be three rows high:

first row: text accusative on left column, 2nd and 3rd empty

2nd row: text nom. aligned to the right on left column, {{{nom_sg}}} | {{{nom_pl}}} on 2nd|3rd

3rd row: text gen. aligned to the right on left column, {{{gen_sg}}} on 2nd, 3rd empty

How's that?

It should read lienee ostettu auto' above instead of lienee auto.

Is that really an object? As far as I know, the whole idea of a passive is to make the "undergoer" the subject. Like in English they were welcomed.

Finnish does not have passive in exactly tha same sense as in English. Quote from Wikipedia article Finnish language: "The passive voice (sometimes called impersonal or indefinite) resembles a "fourth person" similar to, e.g., English "people say/do/". Your example "They were welcomed" is "Heidät toivotettiin tervetulleeksi", i.e. it really has an object, grammatically speaking.

Which form of the pronouns is used with the passive? Is it the nominative or the t-form?

It's the t-form.

Ok, then I think it would count as an accusative.

I found a scientific paper that uses the same argument. It calls it the "pronoun test": a form is really an accusative, if it turns into the t-accusative when you replace a word with a pronoun.

This is from the English Wikipedia article on accusative:

Uralic languages[edit] Finnish[edit] According to traditional Finnish grammars, the accusative is the case of a total object, while the case of a partial object is the partitive. The accusative is identical either to the nominative or the genitive, except for personal pronouns and the personal interrogative pronoun kuka/ken, which have a special accusative form ending in -t. For example, the accusative form of hän (he/she) is hänet, and the accusative form of kuka (or ken) is kenet. The major new Finnish grammar, Iso suomen kielioppi, breaks with the traditional classification to limit the accusative case to the special case of the personal pronouns and kuka/ken. The new grammar considers other total objects as being in the nominative or genitive case.

All I'm asking is that you return the nominative-accusative singular form into the template. Why is that so difficult?

All I'm asking is why the nominative form is called an accusative as well. I'm not currently convinced that it belongs there.

I started a discussion in the BP about it.