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 ...

, the momentane is a

verb aspect In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, as denoted by a verb, extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to ...

indicating that an occurrence is sudden and short-lived.

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

has a number of momentane markers; they differ in the valency and voice of the verbs they produce, but all indicate sudden, short-lived occurrences; for example, the verb ''ammahtaa'' (''to dash ahead suddenly''; not said of a person) is an

anticausative An anticausative verb ( abbreviated ) is an intransitive verb that shows an event affecting its subject, while giving no semantic or syntactic indication of the cause of the event. The single argument of the anticausative verb (its subject) is a ...

, momentane version of ''ampua'' (''to shoot''). Another example is the verb ''katsaista'' (''to take a quick look''), which is a momentane version of ''katsoa'' (''to look''). For semantic reasons, not all momentane markers can be used with all verbs; for example, an anticausative marker can only be used with verbs representing occurrences that can happen accidentally or on their own. Verbs with momentane markers are considered independent words, and native speakers rarely analyze them, but do synthesize them. Often the parent verb is not in use, leaving only the derived forms such as the momentane. Often these are combined with a

frequentative In grammar, a frequentative form ( abbreviated or ) of a word is one that indicates repeated action but is not to be confused with iterative aspect. The frequentative form can be considered a separate but not completely independent word called a ...

to indicate a series of short actions. For example, ''heilua'' "to swing"; ''heilahtaa'' "to swing once by itself"; ''heilahdella'' "to swing to and fro continuously". Another note is that the root may not be a fully formed verb, but mere onomatopoeia, e.g. ''pam+auttaa'' "to bang (something suddenly once)" or in frequentative form ''pam+autella'' "to bang (something suddenly multiple times)". The markers are affected by

consonant gradation Consonant gradation is a type of consonant mutation (mostly lenition but also assimilation) found in some Uralic languages, more specifically in the Finnic, Samic and Samoyedic branches. It originally arose as an allophonic alternation betw ...

, as illustrated by this pair of first infinitives vs. second-person indicatives: ''pamahtaa'' ~ ''pamahdat'', ''pamauttaa'' ~ ''pamautat'' / ''pamautella'' ~ ''pamauttelet''.

External links

Morfofonologian harjoituksia
(in Finnish) Finnish language Grammatical aspects Verb types {{grammar-stub