Category:Finnish possessive suffixes

These suffixes appended to nouns correspond to the possessive pronouns in the Indo-European languages (-ni = English my, French mon/ma/mes, Swedish min/mitt/mina, etc.).

Usage[edit]

In addition to indicating possession, these have also other uses.

1. appended to a genitive-governing postposition when the genitive object is a personal pronoun (minun, sinun, hänen, meidän, teidän, heidän)

   minun edessäni → in front of me

   heidän takanansa → behind them

2. appended to the end of the comitative case; the individual suffix follows the subject of the clause

   (Minä) kävelin koirineni kadun yli.

   I and my dogs walked across the street.

   I walked across the street with my dogs.

   (Sinä) kävelit koirinesi kadun yli.

   You and your dogs walked across the street. (when addressing one person)

   You walked across the street with your dogs. (when addressing one person)

3. in shortened sentences, appended to a nominal verb form when the shortened clause has the same subject as the main clause

   Huutaessani en tajunnut mitään, mitä he sanoivat.

   When shouting/When I shouted, I didn't understand anything they said.

4. in predicative adverbials that indicate an emotional state, according to the subject of the clause

   (sinä olit) huolissasi → (You were) worried (2nd-pers. sg.)

5. appended to the end of the fifth infinitives, according to the subject of the clause

   Olin lähtemäisilläni, kun sinä tulit.

   I was about to leave, when you came.

6. the third-person suffixes -nsa/-nsä (or their shortened forms) are lexicalised in some adverbs without any certain meaning

   toisinaan → occasionally

   sinänsä → per se

Note that there are two suffixes for the third-person singular and plural, one with a and the other with ä, according to the vowel harmony: e.g. kirja, "book", gets -nsa instead of -nsä, because a and ä cannot be in the same word – päivä, "day", gets -nsä instead of -nsa, for the same reason.

When the third-person suffix -nsa/-nsä is appended to nouns that are in singular and plural inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, essive and abessive, plural partitive and comitative and singular partitive that ends in -tä or -tä, the S and A/Ä are very often omitted from the suffix and the last As/Äs or Es of the case suffixes preceding the remaining N are doubled — resulting in -an/-än and -en. In standard Finnish, both the "full" form and the shortened form are acceptable (cf. -nsä). This same omission takes very often place also in the nominal verb forms used in shortened sentences (examples on each article below) and in the predicative adverbials:

Note: in colloquial language possessive suffixes are infrequently used in 1st and 2nd persons, somewhat more in third person. Instead, when expressing ownership and when needed with postpositions, only the genitive forms of the corresponding personal pronouns before the main word — usually as colloquial or dialectal variants — are used:

minun taloni -> mun/miun talo

minun edessäni -> mun/miun eessä/e(d)es

See also[edit]

• Uusi kielemme