The Finnish Genitive Plural

Abstract

0. Introduction. The Finnish nominal declension has fourteen cases and two numbers. There is no distinction of gender. Case and number are separate formal entities, the case markers for eleven of the fourteen cases being identical in the singular and the plural. The genitive case is one instance in which the case endings are not the same in the two numbers. The other two are the illative and nominative.l A traditional statement of the genitive case, that given by Setaila,2 shows: sg. -n; pi. -en (-in), -den (-tten), -ten. For the genitive plural most paradigms show two forms: (1) with case ending added to a plural stem-(a) -en after short i and after j preceded by a short vowel, as in pieni-en, kirjoj-en; (b) -den elsewhere, optionally varying with -tten in all paradigms, as in mai-den or maitten, korkei-den or korkei-tten; and (2) with case ending added directly to the stem-(a) -en after short i, after other short vowels usually -in (arising from a combination of the -ewith the preceding vowel to form a diphthong in -i-), as in risti-en, kirja-in; (b) -ten after a consonant, as in pien-ten, las-ten. To section 2a of this statement Setala has a note, mentioning that stems in short i sometimes also have an ending -ein beside -ien, as in tallien or tallein.3 The form tallein, genitive plural of the noun stem talli'stable', presents one of the more complicated problems in Finnish morphology, involving not only the genitive plural but the interpretation of the i-stem noun class in combination with the plural morpheme. The following analysis is submitted as having more than routine interest.