Cases of uninflectable expressions

Types of uninflectable expressions

An expression can be uninflectable for a few reasons:

• It is itself an inflected word, such as pojalla, the adessive of poika.
• It is an adverb or other particle, such as kauan or ja.
• It is a sentence or sentence fragment, such as Säkenöi voimaa (“Sparkles strength”; was the name of a horse).

Strings of digits and special characters are not uninflectable in this sense, since they are read as words or phrases that can be inflected. In writing, a colon is used to separate the expression from the inflection suffix, e.g. 30:ssä = kolmessakymmenessä, §:ssä = pykälässä, Ω:lla = ohmilla or oomegalla, depending on intended meaning.

However, when a character stands for the name of a symbol, rather than the thing symbolized by it, it is natural to use a supporting noun as described below. For example, to say that “&” has several different shapes, it is more natural to write &-merkillä on useita eri muotoja than to use just &:llä. Both &-merkillä and &:llä would be read as et-merkillä, since the name of the character is et-merkki.

A title of a book or other work can be inflected normally, if it consists of a noun and its attributes, e.g. Seitsemän veljestä : Seitsemässä veljeksessä. However, when several titles are mentioned, they can all be treated as uninfectable for uniformity, e.g. Seitsemän veljestä -teoksessa.

Using supporting nouns

We may need to use an uninflectable expression in a sentence context where it has to be in an inflected form. For example, you might want to ask what is the difference between pojalla and pojalle. The Finnish sentence Mitä eroa on ... ja ...? requires the expressions in the adessive, but you can’t write pojallalla and pojallalle. Instead, we need to use a supporting noun and apply inflection to it. The supporting noun is a general noun that corresponds to the class of the expression, such as sana (word).

There are two ways to attach a supporting noun to an expression, exemplified here for an expression that is a word being discussed as an element of a language:

• pojalla-sana; the support noun is the second part of a compound word, and a hyphen is always used in this context
• sana ”pojalla”; the support noun precedes the expression, as a separate word, and the expression is typically put in quotation marks or italicized for clarity

Using these ways, we can ask Mitä eroa on pojalla-sanalla ja pojalle-sanalla? or Mitä eroa on sanalla ”pojalla” ja sanalla ”pojalle”? We could shorten these as Mitä eroa on pojalla- ja pojalle-sanalla? and Mitä eroa on sanoilla ”pojalla” ja”pojalle”?, so that the supporting noun “supports” two expressions simultaneously.

In an awkward situation where a sentence or sentence fragment is used as a name and the name needs to be inflected, you need to decide on a suitable support noun. To form the genitive of the horse name Säkenöi voimaa, known to refer to a stallion (ori in Finnish), the most natural way would be Säkenöi voimaa -oriin.