Finnish: a Comprehensive Grammar

Finnish: A Comprehensive Grammar presents a fresh, accessible and thorough description of the language, concentrating on the real patterns of use in modern Finnish. The book moves from the sound system through morphology and word classes to a detailed analysis of sentence structures and semantic features.??Key features include: particular focus on examples from spoken Finnish reflecting current usage, grammatic phenomena classified as common or rare, appendices distinguishing base forms from final letter combinations, English-Finnish contrasts highlighted throughout.??This Comprehensive Grammar is an essential reference for the intermediatre and advanced learner and user of Finnish.

Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Preface; Notational conventions and abbreviations; Chapter 1 Introduction; 1.1 The relation of Finnish to other languages; 1.2 Finnish and Finland, past and present; 1.3 The basic characteristics of Finnish; 1.4 What are the special difficulties?; Chapter 2 Pronunciation and sound structure; 2.1 Letters and sounds; 2.2 Vowels and consonants; 2.3 Short and long sounds; 2.4 Diphthongs; 2.5 Syllables; 2.6 Rhythm, word stress patterns and intonation patterns; 2.6.1 Rhythm; 2.6.2 Word stress patterns; 2.6.3 Intonation patterns and accentuation; 2.7 Vowel harmony.

2.8 Major dialectal differences in pronunciationChapter 3 Word structure; 3.1 Nominals and their inflectional endings; 3.2 Finite verb forms and their endings; 3.3 Non-finite verb forms and their endings; Chapter 4 Two important sound alternations; 4.1 Consonant gradation of p, t, k; 4.1.1 The types of consonant gradation; 4.1.2 The rules of consonant gradation; 4.1.3 Applying the basic rule to nominals; 4.1.4 Applying the rules to verbs; 4.1.5 Additional comments; 4.1.6 The most common words with consonant gradation; 4.2 Vowel changes before i endings; Chapter 5 The declension of nominals.
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