The aggressive () is a

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

construction that occurs in the

Finnish language Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedis ...

, especially in emotional outbursts. It expresses negation or rejection and resembles a negative clause, but it lacks the Finnish negative auxiliary. Instead, the aggressive is often marked with an obscene word, which tends to be seen as a distinctive feature of the construction. The aggressive has playfully been described as a grammatical mood by the inventor of the term, but the construction operates on the syntactical level and morphologically the verb is in a regular mood (typically in the

indicative A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentences. Mos ...

). It is only found in the

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

, with the written examples almost always being an example of code-switching. The aggressive is in vogue particularly with the youth, but the characteristic omission of the negative auxiliary has already been found in samples of

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

al Finnish recorded in the early 20th century. Even though the construction is not uncommon in

colloquial Finnish Colloquial or spoken Finnish () refers to the unstandardized spoken variety of the Finnish language, in contrast with the standardized form of the language (). It is used primarily in personal communication and varies somewhat between the differen ...

, little attention has been paid to it in

Finnish grammar The Finnish language is spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns elsewhere. Unlike the languages spoken in neighbouring countries, such as Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages, or Russian, which ...

s, as it has mostly been regarded as an exceptional variant of the negative clause.

Characteristics

The characteristics of the aggressive were analyzed by in his doctoral dissertation in 2007. According to , the aggressive is an affective and reactive construction where the negative auxiliary is omitted and the main verb tends to be at the end. In addition, there is often an expletive (obscene) word at the beginning and the construction tends to include a semi-negative word – typically ' otanything', which can be analyzed as a

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...

or an

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

. More specifically, has identified four main varieties of the construction (below, nearly word-by-word translations into English are given with extra clarifications in

square bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

s): * The negative construction without the negative auxiliary (an optional expletive +

complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-clas ...

s and adjuncts and adverbs connected to the verb + the negative form of the main verb). *: '(Fuck) I anything know ot' * The affirmative-negative construction (an expletive in singular or plural + complements and adjuncts and adverbs connected to the verb + the affirmative form of the main verb). *: 'Fuck I anything know uck I don't know anything' * The repetitive construction (an expletive in plural + the affirmative form of the main verb with the lexeme mentioned earlier). *: 'Shit fI know!' * The construction (the

grammatical subject The subject in a simple English sentence such as ''John runs'', ''John is a teacher'', or ''John drives a car'', is the person or thing about whom the statement is made, in this case ''John''. Traditionally the subject is the word or phrase whi ...

+ an expletive in plural + the verb 'to care' + complements and adjuncts connected to the verb). *: 'I shit care about it don't give a shit'

Origin of the term

In his dissertation, does not directly refer to the construction as "the aggressive", but he mentions that such a name has been used of the negative construction without the negative auxiliary. Elsewhere, he has himself repeatedly used it to refer to a negative construction that includes no negative auxiliary. The Finnish term first appeared in a parody of

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

argumentation written by in 1999. It was coined by shortening the

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...

'aggressive' into a novel

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

inspired by the existing noun (referring to the completely unrelated egressive case of the

Komi language The Komi language ( kv, коми кыв, ''komi kyv''), also known as Zyryan, Zyrian or Komi-Zyryan (Komi: коми-зырян кыв, komi-zyrjan kyv), 's pseudo-scientific definition describes the aggressive as a recently discovered affective negative verb mood in the Finnish language. The verbs in 's examples are morphologically in the indicative mood, but according to his description it is typical for the "aggressive mood" to prefix (' fuck', literally ' cunt' but largely diluted owing to its high frequency especially in the vernacular of young people) as a mock bound morpheme to a pronoun that functions as the grammatical subject of the clause ( 'fuck-I there go uck I won't go there) or, alternatively, to a pronoun in a locative case ( 'fuck-there anybody is uck there won't be anybody there). 's joke was first published in , the

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via a copy machine. Zines are the product of either a single person or of a very s ...

of the students of Finnish and

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ...

at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

, and later republished in (1/2000), a magazine in nationwide circulation. Since then, the joke has been posted and reposted on various Internet forums, but often with additions that miss the original idea of a grammatical mood and focus on the use of the expletive. Sometimes the aggressive has mistakenly been described as a

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

part of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...

References

External links

An extended version
of Jaakko Häkkinen's joke about the "aggressive mood" {{Grammatical moods Finnish language Grammatical moods Profanity

Characteristics

Origin of the term

See also

References

External links