3rd infinitive / verb stem

[Woods]

According to Finnish: An Essential Grammar, "the (...) third infinitive is formed by adding -ma/-mä to the inflectional stem of the verb." It "can be derived fro the 3rd person singular of the present indicative, by detaching the personal ending."

However, the examples below follow:

huomata - huomaama-
kaivata - kaipaama-
levätä - lepäämä-
maata - makaama-

So in spite of what was just said, it seems the personal ending stays there in some cases. Any ideas when this could be expected? Are these exceptions or are there many of them?

[Naava]

I'm not sure if I understood what the problem here is. Are you wondering why it's huomaama-, kaipaama-, lepäämä- and not huomama-, kaipama-, lepämä-?

[Woods]

Are you wondering why it's huomaama-, kaipaama-, lepäämä- and not huomama-, kaipama-, lepämä-?

Exactly :)

[Naava]

These are called supistumaverbi in Finnish: they're verbs that have
A) a vowel stem with 2-3 syllables, which ends in either a long vowel or two short vowels*, and
B) a consonant stem that ends in -t.

*this looks like a diphthong, but the vowels belong to different syllables

Eg. huomata, kaivata, levätä, maata:

Vowel stems:
huo.maa-, kai.paa-, le.pää-, ma.kaa-
-> two syllables, ends in a long vowel

Consonant stems:
huomat-, kaivat-, levät-, maat-
-> ends in a -t

Vowel stem is used with personal pronouns and the 3rd infinitive:
1st person: huomaa+n
2nd person: huomaa+t
3rd person: huomaa+Ø

Infinitive: huomaa+ma

Consonant stems are used with 3rd person imperatives, for example:
huomatkoon, huomatkoot (sg, pl)
kaivatkoon, kaivatkoot
levätköön, levätkööt
maatkoon, maatkoot

So, the long vowel in huomaama, kaipaama, lepäämä, makaama that you see is not the third person marker but part of the stem itself.

There used to be a consonant between the vowels (cf. palata, which has an archaic stem palaja- in addition to the modern palaa-). The Finnish name supistumaverbi refers to this. I don't know if it has any name in English, but one possible (and somewhat literal) translation could be 'contraction verbs'.

[langmon]

These are called supistumaverbi in Finnish: they're verbs that have
A) a vowel stem with 2-3 syllables, which ends in either a long vowel or two short vowels*, and
B) a consonant stem that ends in -t.

*this looks like a diphthong, but the vowels belong to different syllables

What about puhua and (hän) puhuu? Because you said that two short vowels could also look like a diphtong, I am wondering if puhuu really is pronounced with a long vowel, as I used to think. Yes, this is a beginner's question . But I am a beginner anyway. So is it pronounced puhuu or puhu-u?

[Naava]

What about puhua and (hän) puhuu? Because you said that two short vowels could also look like a diphtong, I am wondering if puhuu really is pronounced with a long vowel, as I used to think. Yes, this is a beginner's question . But I am a beginner anyway. So is it pronounced puhuu or puhu-u?

Beginner questions as just as welcome as any other type of questions! No, you haven't been mistaken - it is pronounced ['puɦu:].

I should've written "two different short vowels" - in any case, long vowels, two short vowels in adjacent syllables, and diphthongs are all different things. The difference between a short and a long vowel is the length, nothing else*; diphthong has two different vowels in the same syllable; and hiatus (which, I've now learnt, is the term in English I was looking for) means that there's two different vowels one after another but they belong to different syllables. For example, you have a long vowel in pu.huu, diphthong in pu.hui.vat, and hiatus in pu.hu.a.

But whether some vowels belong to the same syllable or not hardly matters in speech. They sound pretty much the same, although sometimes you can hear a difference in stress. Anyway, you need to know the syllables if you want to add hyphenation to your text or if - like in my previous post - you're talking about linguistics.

*There could be some difference in height, too, but I'm not sure if anyone has ever studied that. I did a quick search and found a doctoral thesis that has something about length, but it's half past ten right now and tbh I feel a bit tired, so I'll just leave a link here with a warning that it might or might not be relevant: *click*.

[langmon]

Beginner questions as just as welcome as any other type of questions! No, you haven't been mistaken - it is pronounced ['puɦu:].

Thank you for your answer.
And because of all this energy you put into writing posts like these, I know that you love Finnish! Just admit it!

Besides... out of curiosity only... I know that some persons watched that "Taking a look at Finnish a.k.a. Suomi from an Indo-Germanic perspective" videos (links mentioned in the Finnish questions thread). But I'd still like to know if you were among the watchers as well. Because it was (partially) made because of your own (sort of) curiosity, so I just like to know, that's all. Maybe you discovered a little bit about these "outsider's" mindsets towards Finnish .

[Naava]

Thank you for your answer.
And because of all this energy you put into writing posts like these, I know that you love Finnish! Just admit it!

Well, it's not a secret I love languages and linguistics. That's why I study them at university... And that's why I joined Unilang, too.

But I'd still like to know if you were among the watchers as well.

Sorry, but I wasn't. I prefer reading over listening, so I rarely watch videos.

[langmon]

But I'd still like to know if you were among the watchers as well.

Sorry, but I wasn't. I prefer reading over listening, so I rarely watch videos.

Nevamind. No reason to tell me that you are sorry even. As for me, I like both ways. Just queued writing a short summary of the videos (but in the other thread).

[Naava]

Oh, I'll read it when you've posted it, then!