The nature of word-like suffixes

Finnish has suffixes that may appear at the very end of a word and that correspond to words in their meaning. This means that they have separate meanings instead of just modifying the meaning of the word they have been attached to. These suffixes are therefore called word-like suffixes in this book. In linguistics, you may instead find terms like enclitic particle or just clitic.

For some use of word-like suffixes, we can even name a word that they correspond to. The word eikä, with the suffix kä, corresponds to ja ei, and sekin, with the suffix kin, corresponds to se myös. However, the most word-like suffixes do not have such counterparts.

Word-like suffixes are pronounced as part of the word they are attached to. This means that the suffix is always unstressed. There is limited interaction between the forms of the suffix and the word:

• The suffix adapts to vowel harmony, e.g. kAAn appended to kala yields kalakaan, but appended to kylä it yields kyläkään.
• The suffix is comparable to a separate word or a part of a closed compound in the sense of triggering boundary gemination when applicable; e.g. tulekin is pronounced [tulekkin].
• Assimilation rules apply the same way as inside a word, e.g. tulenpa is pronounced [tulempa].
• The suffix mostly does not affect secondary stress. This means that stressing rules apply to the word before the suffix. For example, the word tulivatko has no secondary stress, even though a four-syllable word normally has secondary stress on the third syllable. In a longer word like tulivatkohan, with two word-like suffixes, secondary stress may appear: túlivàtkohan.

Except for kin and kAAn, which can be appended to almost any word in a sentence, the word-like suffixes are usually appended only to the first member of a sentence. This means typically the first word, but the first member can also consist of a noun and its attribute(s), e.g. Hyvä tuloshan se on (Well, it’s a good result), where the first member is the predicative hyvä tulos (good result).

A word-like suffix cannot normally be appended to the first part of a compound word, only at the end of the entire word. However, kin or kAAn can alternatively be appended to a first part that is in the genitive, when the second part is a derived adjective with the suffix inen. For example, kin can be appended to toisenlainen in two ways: toisenlainenkin ∼ toisenkinlainen. The same applies to compound adverbs with päin as the second part, e.g. eteenpäin: eteenpäinkin ∼ eteenkinpäin.

There can be several word-like suffixes in a word, as in olet|ko|han, but usually at most two. Larger clusters of such suffixes are used in contrived examples of the purported complexity of Finnish.