Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Finnish declension/reply (6)

The question "why" beats me. I don't know. The Uralic -m accusative has disappeared somewhere in the course of the centuries. I translate here what Kotus has to say about the issue:


 * A noun has about 140 inflected forms (when forms created with clitics are not counted): there are 12 cases both in singular and plural, each of which may be combined with a possessive suffix which is different for each person. Instructive and comitative exist only in plural form, of which the latter always requires a possessive suffix. Accusative is not a noun case.

This is what Wikipedia says:


 * A partial object is always in partitive. Old Uralic accusative with -m ending has in modern Finnish transformed to resemble genitive. The case of total objective may also resemble nominative. In Finnish grammatic tradition it has been customary to call both forms of total object "accusative" ; they have been referred to as "genitive-accusative" and "nominative-accusative". Additionally the personal pronouns and the pronoun kuka/ken have a separate accusative form, ending with "-t"; this form is being used both as genitive and nominative accusative.


 * Another principle followed by e.g. Auli Hakulinen's "Large Finnish Grammar" of 2004 (quoted above) is to use the term accusative only of the accusative forms of the personal pronouns and the pronoun kuka/ken: only these forms differ from genitive and nominative forms. The problem with this interpretation is, however, that genitive and the accusative which in modern language looks like genitive are both etymologically and by meaning separate cases.

To sum up, there are two theories regarding the existence of accusative for nouns in modern Finnish: either there is one, and it has two parallel forms in singular or there is none.