finnish gerunds (those -ing verbs)

[pinguin]

Moi,

the other day I learned the sentence Hän on ostoksilla ruokakaupassa

S/he is (going) shopping at the grocery store.

ostoksilla is the plural adessive of ostos, which is a noun.

i know we have gerunds in english, where we can take nouns and turn them into verbs. the shopping. shopping. so i assume this is the same.

is there any better explanation? or any other noun/verbs like this?

kiitos.

t.Kati

hyvää joulu

[AldenG]

This example isn't really a gerund. It's more akin to saying someone is "on duty." It comes from ostos, a purchase. He is "out on purchases," one might say, though admittedly one never does in English. "Making [the/his] rounds" and "on rounds" are other comparable expressions, as is "on the hustings."

A word like ostos (and many others like kalastus, fishing) is conceptually similar to a gerund, since it is derived from a verb and turns it into a noun. But the true gerund-like form of ostaa would be ostaminen, the fourth infinitive as it is called, where -minen directly transforms the infinitive into an "-ing" noun. Lihan ostaminen on vaativa tehtävä -- the buying of meat is a demanding assignment. Nautin tunnustuksen lukemisesta -- I enjoyed reading the confession. The -minen form takes most noun inflections, a few of which acquire specialized meanings in the process.

[AldenG]

Practically speaking all verbs have a fourth infinitive form ending in -minen. The only real question is what to do with the root. Kalastaa becomes kalastaminen, which most often becomes kalastus or kalastelu. Olla becomes oleminen, which sometimes becomes olo or oleskelu, as in oleskelulupa.

But not all verbs have an "abbreviated" form like ostos or kalastus or kalastelu or oleskelu.

Ostos is not exactly like kalastus. The ostos is the thing purchased, while kalastus is the activity of fishing. Thus kalastus has more gerund-ish quality to it than ostos, even though both are nouns derived from verbs. A more comparable form of ostaa would be osto without the terminal "s". Auton osto on iso homma -- The buying of a car is a big deal.

BTW, I certainly applaud the "real-life language" approach you seem to be taking to learning Finnish. Example, example, example will be your quickest path to understanding, with just enough analysis to make intuitive sense of the examples. The less direct connection to English, the easier it will become for you. Just know how to say things and connect the saying to your mental image of the things. It won't teach you to translate, but it will teach you to understand and speak. Finns don't understand Finnish through translation, either. The words ARE the things, and that's what we foreigners need to strive for as well.

Rauhallista joulua sinullekin.

[Jukka Aho]

the other day I learned the sentence Hän on ostoksilla ruokakaupassa

S/he is (going) shopping at the grocery store.

S/he’s shopping at the moment... there’s no future intent.

You could say...

Hän on menossa ostoksille ruokakauppaan.

...and this would mean he’s either going to go (has been planning to do so and will carry out that plan unless something unexpected will happen), or is already going (i.e. he’s on his way to the store at the moment.)

[AldenG]

I left out olo as a common abbreviation of oleminen (comparable to osto for ostaminen) and should probably have pointed out that oleskelu and kalastelu are properly derived from oleskella and kalastella. But I believe that if we could follow the unconscious path of a thought taking shape in the brain, the shift from oleminen to oleskelu and from kalastaminen to kalastelu does not necessarily detour through those -ella forms of their respective infinitives. Instead there is a direct association from the -elu words to the basic verb from which the -ella verbs are derived. I don't know that there's any way to prove or disprove such a thesis, but it seems to fit.

[AldenG]

So anyway, now that all the cleaning and cooking and stuff is done for Christmas and there is snow falling outside the windows:

First, I don't recommend using the latinate grammatical terminology to learn Finnish. If your purpose is to understand and speak the language -- that is, if you're not a researcher whose primary goal is to learn to discuss the language and how it compares to other languages -- then the latinate terms will hinder more than they help. For one thing, they don't apply very well to Finnish -- you kind of have to bang and bend the sheet metal of Finnish to get it to fit into those categories. For another, such terms add a level of indirection; in short, you end up learning about the language more than learning the language. You don't need to learn nearly as much about Finnish as you might imagine in order to learn Finnish -- in other words to understand and speak it well. As near as I can tell, Finland's own experts have been saying the same thing about the teaching of Finnish for a couple of decades now; it's just that curriculum developers and teachers maybe haven't been listening very hard, or have been listening but not really "getting it." Instruction should focus on teaching reflexes, not rules. And such reflexes are taught more by example than by description.

If you understand verb, noun, adjective, adverb, and pronoun, that's all you really need. You'll learn some case names like partitive and genitive. You should probably skip the names for -ssa, -sta, -lla, -lle, -lta, etc, and just imprint and discuss the actual endings themselves, not the names for them. (If you really feel you must use names, check out the old Finnish names for them. They are at least highly descriptive, although still a step of indirection in your brain between word and meaning.) Unless you already know the names and they immediately spark a flash of clear meaning in your brain, using them will only slow the process of acquiring the necessary recognition and reflexes. And anyway, you'll want to focus on the phrases in which these cases appear, not on the cases themselves per se.

Having said all that, your title asked about gerunds, and that's a nice compact area that was easy to cover with -minen. But you also asked about other endings that turn nouns into verbs. There are in fact many such endings, but they don't make "gerunds" per se, only nouns out of verbs, some of which might be translated with "-ing" and others not. Many are like the -er in English helper and the -ary in granary.

Here's a collection of such endings taking from Iso Suomen Kielioppi:

kulk/u, transit
pääs/y, admittance
kiristel/y, extortion
polk/u path, a "place/course trodden"

korjaa/ja, a person repairing

sela/in, browser (the thing, not the person)

kuto/mo, a place where things are woven

maala/ri, a person who paints
vetu/ri, a locomotive ("puller")

ava/jaiset, an opening ceremony
tanss/iaiset, a dance

ol/o, being (loosely -- various meanings)
muutt/o, move
sääst/ö(t), saving(s)

oppi/las, learner

katkaisi/ja, breaker (mostly electrical)

lannoit/us fertilization
maala/us, a painting
te/os, a work
suomenn/os, a translation to Finnish

keinu/nta swinging
syö/nti, eating
also syöt/ti, bait
naamio/nti, disguising
keksi/ntö, an invention

nyyhk/e, sniffle
hakk/uu, cutting, clearing
makeut/e, sweetener

koke/mus, experience
leipo/mus, a baked good

kellu/ke, a float

nari/na, a creaking

pure/ma, a bite
sunnitel/ma, a plan

More at: § 221 Types and attributes of nouns from verb stems

And then there is the other big class of -ma forms, as in:

Jukka meni ostamaan ruokaa. Jukka went to buy food.
Jukka kävi ostamassa ruokaa. Jukka went to buy food. (The verb controls the case.)
Jukka tuli ostamasta ruokaa. Jukka came from buying food.

Jukka auttoi veljensä ostamalla (hänelle) ruokaa. Jukka helped his brother by buying food (for him).

Jukan ostama kinkku meni suoraan uuniin. The ham bought by Jukka went straight into the oven.

[AldenG]

As an example of the convolutions brought about by imposing Latin over Finnish, the article on Finnish Grammar in Wikipedia says that -minen IS the fourth infinitive in this sentence:

Sinne ei ole menemistä. One mustn't go there.

but is NOT the fourth infinitive in sentences like:

Vihaan lukemista. I hate reading.

Fortunately the Finnish language offers us another term to describe such a distinction: pilkunnussi/nta.

Of course that route to fluency is also open to any who wish to follow it.

[Jukka Aho]

Sinne ei ole menemistä. One mustn't go there.

That works as a compact translation but the exact tone is, IMHO, closer to “It’s not wise/sensible (or humanly possible) to go there. It’s not going to work out and you’ll surely feel sorry if you even try.”

[AldenG]

Jukka, I wonder if you have any perspective to offer on the question of menemistä versus lukemista.

Having just said I don't care, nor should most people care, about such quibbles, I'm nonetheless willing to take the bait on why lukemista is not a fourth infinitive in that context. You seem usually to be versed in such details so perhaps you can make sense of it.

Since the latter sentence can be translated as either "I hate reading" or "I hate to read," is the writer in Wikipedia nonetheless correct, in your opinion?

Of course how it's said in English isn't all that relevant to what it represents in Finnish. But most literally, the first means "It is not to go there" or "There is no going there." What essential element distinguishes those from "I hate to read" or "I hate reading," I wonder.

Obviously I'm assuming you didn't write that part of the Wikipedia article yourself, though I could always be mistaken about that. In that case I'll just have to live with having called it pilkunnussinta.

[AldenG]

I went back and consulted Karlsson to see what authorities were saying about the fourth infinitive a quarter of a century ago. Indeed the view expressed in Wikipedia is the traditional mainstream grammatical view of the Finnish fourth infinitive.

So -minen is only the fourth infinitive when it indicates obligation, as in the rare form Minun on meneminen sinne. I've been reading, conversing, and corresponding in Finnish for almost 25 years now and have never encountered a single such example "in the wild," although I've certainly encountered examples analogous to "ei ole menemistä" with some regularity.

All the other -minen forms are non-infinitive "deverbal nouns." The wife tells me she also learned the Finnish word gerundi long ago but doesn't quite remember which words it applies to.

All this brings me back to my original thesis that this approach to the description of Finnish -- using these rarefied terms and distinctions based on languages from very different families than Finnish -- has no legitimate place at the core of any curriculum that intends to teach practical mastery of Finnish as a foreign language. It appears that almost (perhaps not entirely) the only foreigners who ever become readily and easily functional in Finnish (still quite a small percentage) are those who sidestep the traditional routes to learning the language and devise some strategy of their own.

The kicker is that once someone has an elementary grasp of the major cases and some vocabulary, all the quasi-infinitive forms, sanoa, sanoakseni, sanoessani, sanomassa, sanominen and sanomaisillani, can be mastered in a week of practice. (Of course to do that, you're not constructing the meanings from the smallest particles visible in the words, you're treating them as holistic phenomena in which the only "moving parts" are the case and the possessive suffix.) Or even give it 3-4 weeks for those who have lots and lots of trouble assimilating them. That's still much better than people who've been "studying" for a year but don't yet venture into such "deep waters" -- and thus miss a huge amount of what they see and hear practically every day. All the terminology and the talking-about are doing is to obscure the basic simplicity of it all.

[Rob A.]

Interesting discussion...and I agree you don't need all the grammatical terminology to learn a language.... Over the years I've heard plenty of non-native speakers "butchering" the English language, yet somehow making themselves understood.... I think the "pressure" of needing to communicate eventually "teaches" them what works and what doesn't.... And most of them wouldn't know a gerund from a dangling participle... What you do need, I would think, is a "thick skin" and a willingness to "soldier on" even if people are rolling their eyes or otherwise making fun of your choice of words...

I think that a lot of language learners would prefer it if English, Finnish, or whatever could be "poured" into their heads without all the "fuss and muss" that language learning involves....

But having said this, I'm still interested in the comparative grammatical side of language learning....and I think, to a certain degree, it is helpful and probably speeds up the learning process for better educated language learners. With Finnish probably the only case names that are really worth remembering, and this only to give them a convenient "handle", are the genitive and partitive...I think the rest you can think of in terms of their suffix and what they mean in the context of various use situations.... Typically with the locative cases, I'll often forget the precise name of the case but will recognize and remember the case ending...and, increasingly as time goes by, when to use it. The case names themselves are actually quite descriptive if you understand their Latin origin...and the Finnish-origin case names are quite descriptive as you say...though I can't remember more than a few of them...ulkoeronto, sisäeronto, ulkotulento.......

[silk]

.

[Rob A.]

OK...here they are:

Nominative....Nimentä [talo]
Accusative...Kohdanto [talo, talon]
Genitive.....Omanto [talon]
Essive....Olento [talona]
Partitive....Osanto [taloa]
Translative...Tulento [taloksi]
Inessive....Sisäolento [talossa]
Elative.....Sisäeronto [talosta]
Illative....Sisätulento [taloon]
Adessive...Ulko-olento [talolla]
Ablative....Ulkoeronto [talolta]
Allative.....Ulkotulento [talolle]
Abessive.....Vajanto [talotta]
Comitative.....Seuranto [taloineen]
Instructive....Keinonto [taloin]

...seems relatively self-explanatory...though I don't think it's critical for learning language... Just kind of interesting, though....

[maxxfi]

So, is it 'fourth infinitive' the original grammatical term?
While I find e.g. both 'in/essive' and 'sisä/olento' expressive words to explain the case in question,
I think names like 'Nth infinitive' (especially with N>1 ) sound much more abstract and artificial.

[AldenG]

So, is it 'fourth infinitive' the original grammatical term?

I just went upstairs and asked the resident Finn if she ever learned other terms for these infinitives and infinitive-like words before she learned "infinitive." (Although it was not she from whom I first encountered "the ways of the old ones" in Finnish grammatical terminology, it was the web.) She thought for a moment and said, "yes, there were others but I can't remember them any longer." Nor does she still have schoolbooks from that time.

So somewhere there must be lukio- or lower-level grammar books with the older terminology still floating around some used-book stores in the capital region. Or somewhere. Maybe the libraries are a better bet.

Here is the full conjugation etc. for ostaa: Wiktionary page on ostaa. (You have to click on the blue conjugation line to see it.) It's a fantastic resource having all this work done in fi.Wiktionary and obviously the rows and columns have to be named something. My point is not that the terms and tables should not exist, it is that the focus of study should not be on terms and tables. And the learner should be talking and thinking about "-minen words" and the "missä case" in order to create the necessary neurological pathways and reflexes, a process that is greatly impeded by even a single level of terminological indirection. (Giving a name to a thing rather than saying the thing itself.)

It is not that hard to visualize a scenario where a person could spend an entire day, or even several days, or maybe even a whole week(?), studying and memorizing this conjugation of ostaa, reading about the forms named in the labels, and so on, and at the end of three days be able to reproduce the entire table and talk about the concepts involved -- and still NOT be able to spontaneously create five correct real-life sentences using ostaa, and be even less able to understand a dozen such sentences without writing them down and analyzing them bit by bit. Don't we see and hear examples of that, or something much like it, pretty often?

What if that week were instead spent rehearsing carefully structured and progressive exercises using maybe 1/3 of the table, imprinting the sounds and tongue-feel and associating mental images of the transactions in question? And really, wouldn't it be more than 1/3 of the table and more than 3/4 of real-life situations? Plus, since the subject would be buying in general, not the table per se, you'd learn the important forms that don't appear in the conjugation, such as Hän on ostoksilla ruokakaupassa and Hän on menossa ostoksille ruokakauppaan, which began this whole discussion. The learner might not, even probably would not, be able to tell you the names of the forms and the precise parsings of the sentences he or she was using. And yet which of these two outcomes would be preferable?

As I've said before, but it bears periodic repeating, I knew a lot more grammar back when I knew a lot less FInnish. (Sadly there was about a 15-year period straddling the dot-com boom when I read, spoke, and corresponded very little in Finnish.) It took me some time to wise up about how to learn it. The resources are more extensive now than they were then, but there still appears to be a critical dearth of practice-based material. The preponderance is still too descriptive and structural and insufficiently example- and analogy-based.