The Finnish adjective is not distinguished from the noun, but it presents this peculiarity that contrary to the usage of the cognate languages it agrees with its substantive in number and case. This is probably due to Aryan influences, and has on the whole been a misfortune, for as soon as it is possible to construct sentences in which the connection of adjectives and substantives, far removed from one another in place, can be indicated by similar terminations, it is inevitable that authors should construct complicated phrases of the German or Greek type, which so much disfigure contemporary Finnish literature.

Finnish possesses a comparative and superlative, both having the termination mpa, the comparative being distinguished by the addition of the letter i before this suffix. This i might possibly be identified with that which marks the oblique cases of the plural, on the supposition that it is a determinative element which gradually acquired a plural signification in nouns. The comparative ending is also found in the pronouns jompi, kumpi, and molempi. Though the present numerals of the Finno-Ugric languages are based on a decimal system, it is clear that the original base was seven. For in all the languages the numbers from one to seven are obviously identical, whereas the words for eight, nine, ten are different. Finnish, with the Baltic dialects, and Mordvinian, represents ten by kymmenen, kümme, or kemen; Lappish, Cheremissian, and Vogulian give lokke (or loγe), lu, lau, which signify simply number (Finn. luku). Ostiak has jon, which recalls the Turkish on and Yakut uon, but which has also been explained as ljon (= luku). Cheremissian has das, which looks as if it had been borrowed from the Russian десять, though this explanation can hardly be extended to the Magyar tiz. The numbers eight and nine clearly contain in most of the languages the numbers two and one, so that they must mean ten minus two, and ten minus one, but the element denoting ten is not clear: Finnish, kahdehsan, yhdeksän; Lappish, kaktse, aktse (kuekte, two; akte, one); Syrjenian kökja-mi̱s, ök-mi̱s (ki̱k, two; ötik, one); Mordvinian, kafksa, vehksa (kafta, two; ifkä, one); Cheremissian, kändeχsje, indeχsje (kok, two; ik-tä, one). The Magyar, Ostiak, and Vogul for eight (nyole, njigedlaχ, njålå-lu) seems related, but not the words for nine. The word for a hundred is the same in all the languages.

The personal pronouns are declined almost exactly like nouns. Minä, sinä, hän appear to represent original forms mi-nä, ti-nä, sä-nä (? for tä-nä). The oblique cases in the singular of the 1st and 2nd person are formed either from the stems minu and sinu (which have been adopted by the literary language), or mu, su. The plural stems are me, te, he, apparently strengthened forms of mi, ti, hi, which take i in the oblique cases, but which (like the demonstrative pronouns) do not take t in the nominative.

The genitive of the personal pronoun is supplied by the pronominal affixes, which are added to nouns. They are for the singular ni, si, nsa; for the plural mme, nne, nsa. The 1st person singular ni is difficult to explain, for the pronominal root is mi. Probably final m was changed to n (cf. the verbs), and the i was a later addition. So too the 2nd person singular varies between si and s. It is clear that in the 3rd singular and all the persons of the plural an element, perhaps the n of the genitive, is added to the noun, so that nsa, mme, nne stand for n-sa, n-me, n-te. It is noticeable, however, that in Ostiak and Vogul the 2nd person is distinguished by the element n, and not t, in all three numbers: sing. nen, nän; plur. nen, nan; dual nin. These suffixes are added to the declined noun, after the case termination, whereas in Hungarian the case terminations are added after the pronominal affix. In Cheremissian either combination seems possible. It is a remarkable fact that when the pronominal affixes cause a syllable to be closed, the initial consonant of that syllable is not weakened as in other cases. Tapa + mme and tapa + nsa do not become tavamme, tavansa, but tapamme, tapansa. The explanation of this is very easy if the principles suggested above are correct. The pronominal affixes are enclitics, and hence tápa-nsa does not change its accent, while tapa-lla becomes tavá-lla. But what is much more curious is that while the simple genitive singular and nominative plural are tavan and tavat, the same cases with suffixes appear as tapamme or tapansa. If these forms are not due to analogy they must be explained on a principle which seems to prevail in Finnish, that it is unnecessary to add more than one suffix defining the relations of words, unless there is a question of local position. Thus in the plural the sign of number is considered a sufficient mark both of the nominative and accusative.

The other pronouns call for little comment, but it is noticeable that the relative pronouns and adverbs are fully developed, so that, although many phrases which we should render by temporal and relative clauses are expressed by infinitives and participles (as in Turkish), they can also be expressed by sentences like those of Aryan languages. All the Finno-Ugric languages show an attempt to differentiate the verb from the noun, which is least successful in the Eastern languages, and most fully realized in Finnish. Yet here one can at once discard a mass of forms—the so-called infinitives and participles—which are simple substantives. Their use is explained on pp. [184-202]. The infinitives are formed with two suffixes, ta and ma. The first appears in the 1st infinitive as ta, da, or a, and in the 2nd infinitive, in a weakened form, as te, de, or e. The second suffix ma appears in the 3rd infinitive in its proper form, and as a diminutive in the fourth and fifth infinitives, of which the latter is used only in one case. The present participle, active and passive, is formed by adding va, a common adjectival termination, to the simple or to the passive stem. The past participle active is formed by adding -nehe (nom. nut or nyt) to the stem (cf. such nominal stems as venehe, boat; puhehe, conversation), while the past participle passive is a simple noun with the suffix u or y, and identical with such forms as luku, itku, maksu (p. [45]), except that it has the t which characterises the passive.

Setting aside these forms we have the finite verb, which shows two distinct formations, indicating two separate modes of thought. The 1st and 2nd persons singular and plural take suffixes obviously identical in origin with the pronominal affixes, while the 3rd person, singular and plural, is a simple predicate. The affixes for the verb are 1st sing n, 2nd sing. t, 1st plur. mme, 2nd plur. tte. In as far as these are not absolutely the same as the suffixes added to nouns, they show an attempt to differentiate the verb, but n is clearly the same as -ni; t is a more original form of the 2nd singular, which was once ṭi, and mme is the same in nouns and verbs. The 2nd person plur. in nouns nne has been already explained as n-te; in the verb mme and tte perhaps represent k + me, k + te. Thus it is only in the 1st person plural that the nominal and verbal suffixes absolutely coincide. Toivomme means either we hope or our hope.

The formation of the 3rd persons is quite different. The plural termination is vat. In modern Finnish the singular, as a rule, takes no termination, but merely lengthens the final vowel, if not already long or a diphthong. But (as stated on pp. [62] and [63]) the termination pi, which is found in monosyllabic verbs, and in the weakened form vi in others, is frequent in dialects, and used sometimes in the literary language. This suffix appears in all the Baltic dialects in the forms b, p for the singular, and vat, ba, va for the plural. In Lappish it does not occur in the 3rd person sing. or plur., but in the 1st person plural (p, be, or p), in the 2nd dual (bätte, ppe, bet, vette) and plural (bättet, ppet, bet, vetteð), and in the 3rd dual (ba, van, v). It also occurs sporadically in Cheremissian as the sign of the 3rd person. Now it is quite plain that the Finnish -va-t is the plural form of pi or vi. An analogy for final a sinking to i can be found in the nominative and comparatives (suurempi for suurempa), and it is therefore likely that the 3rd person singular and plural ended in pa and vat (p. [15]). No doubt this pa or va is identical with the suffix of the present participle. In the plural indeed the two forms are absolutely identical even in the modern language: tuovat, antavat, tulevat are either the 3rd person plural present or nominative plural of the participle present. The 3rd person is thus simply a predicate, the verb substantive being, as often, omitted. Pa or va would thus be in its origin a suffix of the present: pi or vi does not appear in any of the other moods or tenses, but vat is the universal termination of the plural. Perhaps it was not original in any tense but the present, as Setälä quotes from old writers and dialects such forms as sanoit (sanoivat), näghitt (näkivät), olisit (olisivat), etc. But it must be remembered that the termination va has not a marked temporal signification, as it is used to form simple adjectives like lihava, fat; terävä, sharp. If then we regard saavat as a simple adjective from the root saa, denoting taking, there is no reason why saivat, saanevat, etc. should not be adjectives from sai, saane, which express modifications of that root. But this is a question of chronology, and it is more probable that when those stems were formed vat was accepted as a suffix of the 3rd plural. In Esthonian the va is sometimes added to the active past participle (tulnuva), and similar forms are quoted from Agricola. In modern Finnish the 3rd person singular generally ends simply in a long vowel, perhaps the remains of a diphthong ending in u, which occurs in some dialects.

Besides the personal terminations already discussed, we find in reflexive verbs (in some of which however the reflexive meaning is not very clear) me as the suffix of the 1st singular (annoime, luome, siirrime[2]), te for the 2nd person (weäite, seisotaite, tungeite), ksen, kse, ihe for the 3rd person. These latter forms are carefully discussed by Setälä (Suom. Ug. Seuran Aikakauskirja, No. II, 1887, p. 33 ff.), and he seems to prove satisfactorily that they represent k + sen, of which the first element is a present suffix, found also in the imperative and negative, and the second the pronoun of the 3rd person, found also in the optative, passive, and other forms. The terminations me and te might be explained as the original forms, seeing that the roots of the 1st and 2nd personal pronouns are probably mi and ti, but they are more likely to be due to false analogy, the real meaning of he (= sen) in the 3rd person having been forgotten.

We have thus for terminations indicative of person the following:—

Sing.Plur.
1.n (me)m + me
2.t (te)t + te
3.(a)pi, vi, long vowelvat or simple t.
(b)sen, hen, se, he.