About verb type 3

[weijie]

I found in my textbook, the type 3 verbs undergo a reverse consonant gradation.
Such as ommella conjugates into ompelen;
opetella into opettelen;
suudella into suutelen.
Is this a rule in verb type 3, that consonant gradation 'must' be reverse? Please give me more examples and counterexamples. Thank you!!

[weijie]

And also it seems that type 4 also reverse the consonant gradation.
tavata into tapaan;
verrata into vertaa;
Right?

[Jukka Aho]

Is this a rule in verb type 3, that consonant gradation 'must' be reverse? Please give me more examples and counterexamples.

You might want to take a look at Kimberli Mäkäräinen’s Finnish grammar website – the Consonant Gradation and Verbs sections.

[Siquedi]

Consonant Gradation in verbs of verb type 3 finnished in -la/-lä and in verbs of verb type 4 -ta/-tä:

-Hakata------hakkaan, tykätä---------Tykkään
- Hypätä------ hyppään
- Ajatella----- ajattelen, Kätellä---------kättelen
- Maata------ makaan
- Tavata----- tapaan
- Suudella----- suutelen, Pudota-------- putoan
- Kuunnella---- kuuntelen
- Piirrella ------piirtelen
- Vihellellä -----viheltelen
- Hangata ------ hankaan
- Ommella------- ompelen

BUT!! Avata, kävellä and kuvata don't have consonant gradation.

I think you might find these links helpful as well: http://www.uusikielemme.fi/consonantgradation.html , http://www.uusikielemme.fi/verbtype3cg.html , http://www.uusikielemme.fi/verbtype4cg.html

[Rob A.]

In order to know how consonant gradation applies you also need to know the basic word stem...usually this isn't a problem, but there are words that, intuitively, you might think should grade the same way but don't....

tavata, for example, has two meanings... first, "to meet", and second..."to spell", from a Swedish word. And they grade differently because their word stems are different. ...avata is more like the second version of tavata than the first...

But this gets complex....Google searches should produce better explanations than mine... And maybe, in the end, it might be best just to "memorize" which words have which rules...though sometimes the word stem might be obvious, then consonant gradation shouldn't be a problem...

[j.petsku]

Pelata and pelätä is another pair of verbs that grade differently for some odd reason.

Pelata — Pelaan
Pelätä — Pelkään

Pelaan jääkiekkoa.
I play hockey.

Pelkään jääkiekkoa.
I'm afraid of the puck.

Much of this is just learned through exposure. Juggling the rules can really get your brain in a knot, although they're definitely a good starting point.

[Upphew]

Pelata and pelätä is another pair of verbs that grade differently for some odd reason.

Pelata — Pelaan
Pelätä — Pelkään

Pelata - pelaan - peli
Pelätä - pelkään - pelko

Dunno if that has anything to do with anything...
googlata - googlaan - Google

[Rob A.]

Pelata and pelätä is another pair of verbs that grade differently for some odd reason.

Pelata — Pelaan
Pelätä — Pelkään

Pelaan jääkiekkoa.
I play hockey.

Pelkään jääkiekkoa.
I'm afraid of the puck.

Much of this is just learned through exposure. Juggling the rules can really get your brain in a knot, although they're definitely a good starting point.

I think it takes a long time to develop an "instinct" for this stuff... Native speakers will simply have an "intuition"...

However pelätä comes from pelki...and so originally has a "k"....pelata, on the other hand, probably comes from the Swedish, spel....no "k"...therefore no need for it with consonant gradation... Consonant gradation is about going back and forth between "strong" forms and "weak" forms....and if you don't have either, no need for consonant gradation....

[AldenG]

It may help to remember that what we call the infinitive today (specifically in this case, the 1st infinitive) is a derived form, not the basic form of a verb. The fact that the infinitive is the form you look up in a dictionary is an artifact of the analytical process that led to modern grammatical description of languages. It was one of the late forms to come into existence.

The "basic" form of any verb (forgive me if I repeat myself, as memory is my weakest attribute) is what I call the "simple imperative", i.e. the 2nd person singular imperative. This simple imperative form also happens, not by coincidence, to be the stem to which personal endings are attached to form the present indicative.

I think it is obvious that the very first verbs ever to exist, in fact probably the first words of any kind, were the simple imperative: Come! Look! Eat! Give!

Thus the form to imprint in your mind is pelkää/n, tapaa/n, etc. The forms to rehearse, if you study a bare-bones minimum forms of verbs (though it is more effective to memorize them "in action", in phraselets) are thus:

huuda/n (huutaa), huusi/n, huutaa
ehdi/n (ehtii), ehdi/n, ehtiä
kuuntele/n (kuuntelee), kuunteli/n, kuunnella
pelkää/n (pelkää), pelkäsin pelätä
pelaa/n (pelaa), pelasi/n, pelata
tapaa/n (tapaa), tapasi/n tavata
tavaa/n (tavaa), tavasi/n, tavata

You will always find it easier, though not always trivial, to create the infinitive or 3rd person singular from a basic form than to find the basic form from an infinitive. Plus if you're going to make a mistake, the infinitive is usually less important to get correct than the basic form, and your intent is usually more obvious in context with a mistaken infinitive than a mistaken imperative or personal form.

Also, ambiguities like Rob mentioned between meeting and spelling tend to occur more in the infinitive because it is a derived and in some cases "eroded" form of the verb.

The ending of the infinitive evolved to "fit neatly" onto the basic form of the verb. The only thing making it -ta rather than -taa is consonance with what goes before it. At least that would originally have been true. There has doubtless been some deliberate "tweaking" by authorities to regularize certain descriptive rules.

Likewise the groups (and there are a number of competing group-systems) have been chosen to represent the behavior of the verb, so it's almost always true that if a verb contains a letter grouping that CAN mutate like others in the group, it WILL do so.

[Jukka Aho]

I think it is obvious that the very first verbs ever to exist, in fact probably the first words of any kind, were the simple imperative: Come! Look! Eat! Give!

Thus the form to imprint in your mind is pelkää/n, tapaa/n, etc.

One of the plus sides of this approach is you’ll also learn, on the side, how to bark out blunt orders in Finnish... ;)

[Rob A.]

Very well explained, Alden... and with nouns, it is often helpful to look to the genitive to get an idea of what the basic form will be.... for example, vesi/veden....and the original form was probably something close to *vede, which is one of the "clues" used by some linguists to suggest a very ancient, and quite plausible connection between Finnic languages and Indo-European languages... Think about the Russian word for water...вода (vodá).

And even more interesting...another ancient word mesi/meden with it's connection to flower nectar and honey... In Russian...мёд (mjod). And, of course, there is the English word, "mead"...a fermented honey drink.

Admittedly these are just couple of examples and don't "prove" anything without a lot more detail, but the connection with the genitive form is clear...and as these are ancient words unlikely to have been borrowed, they hint at ancient language connections, though the exact nature of these connections is deeply complex....