Compositive forms

The concept of a compositive form

Many words have a special form used as the first part of a closed compound instead of the nominative. As a common example, nouns and adjectives ending with nen normally have a compositive form ending with s instead of nen. For example, ihminen (human being) has the compositive form ihmis, appearing in words like ihmiskunta (mankind) and ihmissuhde (personal relationship). Irregular compositive forms include syys of syksy (autumn), e.g. in syyskuu (September; literally “autumn month”) and viher of vihreä (green), e.g. viheralue (park or green belt; literally “green area“).

A compositive form like hevos does not appear otherwise. Some compositive forms may appear as independent words, e.g. syys as a poetic variant of syksy, in the nominative.

Compositive forms exist in many other languages as well. For example, the English word “democracy” is based on the Greek word “dēmokratía”, which is a compound with the first part in a compositive form “dēmo” (as opposite to the nominative form “dêmos”),

Many compositive forms are just shortened forms or otherwise explainable on phonetic grounds. However, Finnish has many different types of compositive forms.

Compositive forms are not used in compounds that refer to a word, such as hevonen-sana (the word hevonen), or otherwise contains an expression as quotation of a kind, e.g. Jättiläinen-elokuva (the movie with the name Jättiläinen).

Suomen kielen yhdyssanamuodot (kompositiivit).

The change -nen : -s

Both nouns and adjectives ending with nen have a compositive form where the ending is changed to s, e.g. nainen : nais- (woman). The compositive form is the same as the consonant stem of the word, as appearing e.g. in the partitive singular like nais|ta. For words of this type, it is really the nominative singular that is exceptional; all other forms have ise or is instead of nen.

As an exception, such compositive forms are not used in some geographic names such as Punainenmeri (the Red Sea). Such names are artificial creations, the result of a rule that was adopted in the late 20th century: writing geographic names and many other terms as closed compounds, instead of earlier open compounds like Punainen meri.

Another exception is that words ending with -kertainen are not used as the first part of a compound at all. Some of them, relating to small numbers, have special compositive counterparts: yksinkertainen (single, simple) : yksöis-, kaksinkertainen : kaksois-, kolminkertainen : kolmois-, e.g. kolmoispiste (triple point). Sometimes even nelois- is used, for nelinkertainen.

The compositive forms alkeis- (elementary) and itseis- (absolute) are special in the sense that the corresponding independent words alkeinen and itseinen are just theoretical. These compositive forms were once constructed to replace the international words elementaarinen and absoluuttinen.

Use of singular for plural words

In a sense, the use of singular instead of plural is a compositive form for words that are otherwise used in plural only, called plurale tantum words. For example, häät (wedding) is always used in plural, except in compounds like hääkakku (wedding cake).

If the singular form ended with nen, a compositive form ending with s is used instead. Thus, the word hautajaiset (funeral) is always used in plural as an independent word, and even in compound words, the theoretical singular form hautajainen is not used. Instead, the compositive form hautajais- is used, e.g. hautajaispuhe (funeral oration).

Omission of suffix

Many words that normally contain some derivational suffix appear without that suffix in a compositive form. This applies to color names like valkoinen : valko-, sininen : sini-, punainen : puna-, and keltainen : kelta-. Thus, we say punainen lintu (a red bird) but punavarpunen (a bird species, scarlet grosbeak; literally “red-sparrow”). Words like sini and puna appear as independent words, too, but in a different meaning: as nouns denoting pigments.

Several word stems do not appear as independent words in the base form at all, but appear in a few inflected forms and as compositive forms. They include the stems of locational adverbs such as ulko- (used in ulkona, ulkoa, ulos), which appears in many compounds like ulkopuoli and ulkoministeriö. We can say that ala-, esi-, jälki-, keski-, lähi-, taka-, ulko-, and ylä- are compositive forms of the adverbs alla, edellä, jäljessä, keskellä, lähellä, takana, ulkona, and yllä or their relatives alle, alta, etc. In addition, kauko- (with the vowel -a changed to -o) is the compositive of kaukana, kaukaa, or kauas, and etu- can be seen as the compositive of edessä (which has the stem ete-), e.g. etuovi (front door).

The word täsmällinen (exact) is a derivation of täsmä, which does not appear as such as an independent word, but is used as a compositive form, e.g. in täsmävaaka and täsmäase. Similarly, pika- (fast, express) can be regarded as the compositive of pian (soon) or pikainen (rapid) and äkki- (abrupt, sudden) as the compositive of äkkiä (abruptly) or äkillinen.

For international words that end with aalinen or iivinen, the nen part is refularly omitted, e.g. sosiaalinen – sosiaalihuolto, aktiivinen – aktiiviura, However, in copulative compounds, the normal compositive form ending with s is used, e.g. sosiaalis‑taloudellinen (socioeconomic).

Omission of final sound

When a word ends with a vowel in the nominative, it may lose that vowel when it appears as the first part of a compound. For example, the adjectives suuri, pieni, and uusi often appear as suur-, pien-, and uus-. This is not systematic, but it is common when the second part is a noun, e.g. suurkaupunki (large city).

Apart from the adjectives mentioned above, this phenomenon, called apocope in lin­guis­tics, mostly appears in proper names only, e.g. Haapoja (compound of haapa and oja).

Consonant omission may appear in the word kohtuus (fairness, reasonableness), e.g. kohtuuhinta (reasonable price), but not in all compounds.

Truncation

Sometimes several sounds are omitted from the end of a word, and this cannot be described as omission of a suffix. Such truncation is common with some modern terms, and it often directly imitates foreign expressions. For example, the word ekologinen has the compositive form eko-, much like English “eco-” often stands for “ecological”. In Finnish, such compositive forms can be used productively, e.g. ekotalo (ecological house).

Compositives of this type include afro-, bio-, euro-, geo-, neuro-, psyko- and tekno-. They are sometimes ambiguous; e.g. euro- may refer to Europe, or the European Union, or the euro currency.

A special compositive is kristi-, e.g. in kristikunta (Christendom). It looks like a truncated form of kristitty or kristillinen, both meaning “Christian”, but historically it comes from the Swedish form “Kristi”, which imitates the Latin genitive form “Christi” (Christ’s).

Variation of final vowel

In several old compounds, the last vowel of the first part differs from the vowel used in the word otherwise. This variation has no apparent logic, but with the exception of the kolme : kolmi- case discussed later, the variation consists of the change of -a or -ä to -o or -i. The following list covers most of these compounds, except proper names: aitovieri, huhtikuu, iki‑ (e.g. ikivanha), jalkopohja, jalkopää, karjopiha, kotomaa, kotoperäinen, lehmikarja, lehmihaka, pyörö‑ (e.g. pyöröovi), sikolätti, sikopaimen, sikotauti, sisikunta, sittipörriäinen, sittisontiainen. Most of these words are rare in modern language and often poetic, except huhtikuu (April) and the words beginning with iki- (e.g. ikiliikkuja, ikimuistoinen, ikinuori, ikivanha) or pyörö- (e.g. pyöröhirsi), which is the compositive of pyöreä (round). The compositive koto- corresponds to koti (home) in meaning but is historically a form of its base word kota, which now means only a Lapp hut or similar building.

This phenomenon is an old feature of the language and no more productive; for example, new compounds with sika (swine) do not use the siko- form but the nominative, e.g. sikatalous. From the viewpoint of language learning, it can thus be characterized just as an irregular feature of word composition in a limited set of compounds.

Stem choice

Some words have alternate forms in the nominative, such as tuhat ∼ tuhannen, askel ∼ askele, kyynel ∼ kyynele. For them, only the shorter form—which is generally much more common anyway—is used as the first part of a compound word. However, for the word ainoa ∼ ainut (only; solitary), the ainoa form is normal, ainut just poetic, but in several compounds, ainut- is much more common, e.g. ainutkertainen (one and only), ainutlaatuinen (unique).

Stem extension with -s

A few compounds have their first part in a form that has -s appended: herras- (e.g. herrasmies “gentleman”), pappis- (e.g. pappisseminaari), pari (in pariskunta “married couple”), päiväs- (in päiväsaikaan “in the daytime”), rouvas- (e.g. rouvashenkilö), saarnas- (in saarnastuoli), talvis- (in talvisaikaan “in winter time”), tiilis- (in tiiliskivi).

Other stem variation

The following table shows some more or less irregular compositives. Some of them consist of a combination of changes described above, such as omission of suffix and change of final vowel.

For example, in most compounds where the first part means “green”, the compositive viher is used, e.g. viheralue, viherhuone, viherkasvi. But compounds like vihreälehtinen (green-leaved) and vihreäsilmäinen (having green eyes) have the basic form vihreä.

In proper names, there are many other compositive forms, such as Leppiniemi, where the first part leppi- is a compositive of leppä (alder).

Change of word

In a few compound words, the first part corresponds to a completely different word with the same meaning. For example, in emämaa (mother country) and emolevy (mother board), emä- and emo- are used to mean “mother”, instead of the normal word äiti. The words emä and emo are original Finnish words for mother, but nowadays used in specialized contexts only.

As an another example, the word väki normally means “people, crowd”, but in many compounds, it has its old alternative meaning “strength”. E.g. väkijuoma, literally “strength-beverage”, means strong alcoholic beverage, and väkivalta, literally “strength-power”, means violence.

The word marras is an old word for “dead”, which is normally kuollut in Finnish, but marras appears in a few compounds like marraskuu (November) and marraskesi (scarfskin).

The adjectives pieni, pienoinen, and pikku all mean “small, little”, with variation in style, so that only pieni belongs to normal prose style. However, in compounds, they all appear, in the forms pieni- ∼ pien-, pienois-, and pikku-, without difference in style, just in distribution and partly in meaning. Usually pienois- refers to something miniature, a reduced-size version of something, and pikku- is often used in a completely neutral way to refer to e.g. a relatively small-sized animal species such as pikkujoutsen (Bewick’s swan, literally “small-swan”).

Compositives of numerals

Some basic numerals have compositive forms: kolme : kolmi- (3), neljä : neli- (4), seitsemän : seitsen- (7), and kymmenen : kymmen- (10). Examples:

• kolmivuotias (3 years old)
• nelivuotias (4 yeard old)
• seitsenvuotias (7 years old)
• kymmenvuotias (10 years old)

However, these compositives are not used in numerals ending with -toista or -kymmentä, unless the combined numeral itself is in the compositive form. Thus, we have kolmetoista (13), but kolmitoistavuotias (13 years old).

If a numeral meaning 30, 40, or 70 appears in a compositive form, both of its parts are in such a form, e.g kolmikymmenvuotias (30 years old).

However, regular nominative forms are rather common, e.g. kolmevuotias, and they are accepted in standard language, too. In some words like nelikulmio (rectangle), the com­pos­i­tive word is used always or almost always. For numerals 20, 30,…, 90, regular forms (e.g. kuusikymmentäluku “sixties”) are more common than the special forms (e.g. kuusikymmenluku).

The numerals for hundreds and thousands have compositive forms where the second part is in the nominative instead of the partitive. In these forms, the basic numeral too is in the compositive. For example, the compositive of kaksisataa is kaksisata- and the compositive of kolmetuhatta is kolmituhat-. However, these forms have become rare, and it is much more common to use the nominative, e.g. viisisataavuotias instead of viisisatavuotias.

Ordinal numbers seldom appear as the first part of a compound word. For example, kolmas (third) appears in words like kolmaskertainen (one that has committed something the third time) and kolmasluokkalainen (third-grader) and in compound numerals like kolmas­toista (13th). In most words, it is represented by kolmos-, the compositive form of kolmonen, i.e. the name of the digit “3”. For example, the third base in pesäpallo, a Finnish game resembling baseball, is kolmospesä, and the third gear in a car is kolmosvaihde. Thus, we can call quality levels of a product ykköslaatu, kakkoslaatu, kolmoslaatu, neloslaatu—and there it probably ends.

In the few contexts where ordinal numbers appear in compound words other than numerals, such as -luokkalainen words relating to grades (or “classes” in Finnish terms) at school, the compositives ensi- and tois- or their colloquial versuions eka- and toka- are used instead of ensimmäinen and toinen.

Compositives of bahuvrihi type

As described in section Principles of word composition, Finnish has compound types called bahuvrihi, consisting of an adjective and a noun, such as lyhytjalka (short-legged), from lyhyt (short) and jalka (leg). Such compounds, which have no derivational suffixes, are much less common than derivations with the -inen suffix, like lyhytjalkainen. When such a word appears as the first part of a compound, the situation changes: a compositive form of the bahuvrihi type is used.

For example, “long-tailed” is pitkähäntäinen in Finnish, from pitkä (long) and häntä (tail); the bahuvrihi pitkähäntä would be possible, but basically poetic. Yet, as the first part of a compound e.g. in names of animal species, only the bahuvrihi is used, e.g. pitkähäntäkenguru.

Nouns used as compositives of adjectives

Finnish has a large number of adjectives derived from nouns with the llinen suffix, such as taloudellinen (economic) from talous : talouden (economy). They are normally not used as the first part of a compound, except in copulative compounds like taloudellis-poliittinen (economic and political). Instead, it is common to use the base word instead as the compositive of its derivation, so to say.

For example, we can say taloudellinen kasvu (economic growth), imitating the English expression. In order to make the expression a single word, we don’t use taloudelliskasvu but instead talouskasvu. Similarly, “royal” is kuninkaallinen, derived from kuningas : kuninkaan (king), but “royal palm” is kuningaspalmu. Generally, there are four ways to translate an English expression with a word like “royal” as an attribute, though usually only one or some of them are in actual use for a certain concept:

• using an adjective as an attribute, e.g. kuninkaallinen laivasto (royal navy)
• using a noun in the nominative as the first part of a compound, e.g. kuningashuone (royal house)
• using a noun in the genitive as the first part of a compound, e.g. kuninkaanlinna (royal castle)
• using a noun in the genitive as an attribute, e.g. kuninkaan asetus (royal decree)

Compositives of verbs

A verb as such cannot appear as the first component of a compound word in Finnish. Instead, a verb is represented by a noun related to the verb or by a special special compositive form based on the verb. For example, the word elää (to live) may be represented by its derivation elämä (life), but also by the form elin. The compound elintarvike means “food stuffs, groceries”; tarvike is “material” or “equipment”. The confusing thing is that as a separate word elin means “organ”, both in an anatomic sense and as an organizational concept, but here it represents the verb elää. Another example is olinpaikka “whereabouts”, literally “being-place”, since olin represents the verb olla “to be” and paikka means “place”. It is just a coincidence that olin also appears as a separate word, as a inflected form of the verb (meaning “I was”).

Compositives of verbs are not formed and used in a systematic way, but for each verb, there is usually a limited set of alternatives in use, perhaps just one. The alternatives can be divided into two major types: nouns derived from verbs and compositive forms that do not appear as standalone words. This division is somewhat artificial. For example, in the word keittokirja (cookbook), the first part keitto logically represents the verb keittää (to cook). The word keitto also appears as a standalone word, but in such use, it normally means just “soup”. Thus, we can say that the same derivational suffix -o is used here in two very different meanings: to derive a noun with a specific meaning somehow related to the verb and to create a compositive form of the verb, representing the verb generally.

Different compositives may be in use for the same verb, usually with no apparent logic. For example, for the verb syntyä (to be born), a large number of compositives are in use: synnyin-, synnyntä-, synty-, syntymis-, syntymä-. The most common is syntymä-, which also appears as a noun, meaning “birth”. Most of the others are mainly used in old words where they have been established and may have somewhat poetic tone. For example, syntymämaa and synnyinmaa both mean “land of birth”, but the former tends to be an objective designation, whereas the latter is more solemn or emotional.

All verbs (except the negation verb ei) have a -minen derivation, which coincides in form with the IV infinitive. This derivation has a regular compositive form -mis-, which can in principle be always used. However, more often, other compositive forms are more common, and the -mis- form may even be just theoretical, partly because it is often inconveniently long. Compare e.g. tulo-, the common compositive of tulla, with the theoretically possible alternative tulemis-. However, -mis- forms are sometimes used to emphasize that an action or activity is referred to, rather than its result. For example, the verb järjestää (to order; to sort; to organize) normally has the compositive järjestys-, but since järjestys is also noun meaning “order”, the compositive järjestämis- may be used to refer to ordering rather than order. Thus, järjestämisongelma is a problem with organizing or sorting something, whereas järjestysongelma is a problem with order, a disturbance.

The following table shows derivational suffixes that appear in compositive forms of verbs. The table does not make a distinction between suffixes that are also used to derive nouns and suffixes that appear in compositive forms only. Some of the sample compounds could be interpreted as consisting of just two nouns, so that e.g. in muistisääntö, the first part would be the noun muisti (memory) rather than a compositive form of muistaa (to remember).

The suffixes listed above are mostly productive, i.e. new words are formed using them. However, in such use, the -in suffix, though common in the vocabulary, is probably not productive any more.

The following table presents composite forms of some very common verbs.

There is a much more comprehensive table of compositive forms of verbs in an appendix.

The negation verb is very exceptional even in compounds. In old usage, its compositive form is epä-, which is historically its present participle, e.g. epätoivo (despair, literally “no-hope”). It often indicates active resistance or failure to meet a norm. However, the finite form ei-, always with a hyphen, is also used as a compositive form, to indicate simple negation. If we also consider prefixes that are part of a loanword, we can have a set of different negations of some loanwords, like sosiaalinen (social): epäsosiaalinen (asocial), ei-sosiaalinen (non-social), asosiaalinen, antisosiaalinen.