Originally posted by: Juha_Metsakallas https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/50166509
Edited 2021-06-19
Questions about the word order seem to be common, so I thought to write a post here rather than keeping repeating what others and I have said a couple of times in the exercises.
The word order in Finnish is grammarwise quite relax thanks to extensive marking of words (grammatical cases, other suffixes etc.), but that is not to say all orders have the same meaning, on the contrary different orders usually have at least quite different emphasis if not meaning something else. One of the most important things in that regard is the theme-rheme or topic and comment principle, i.e. put the topic (what you are talking about) first, then the comment (what you say about it).
existential clause
The most obvious case where this topic and comment principle is applied, is whether a clause is an existential clause or not.
- Puu on metsässä. : the topic is the tree and the comment is its location, which makes this a normal clause; the sentence "The tree is in a forest" expresses the same idea in English
-Metsässä : the topic is the location and the comment is what is there, which makes this an existential clause ("something is somewhere"); the sentence "There is a tree in the forest" expresses the same idea in English
Note, that the exact same three words are used in Finnish, but their order defines what you are talking about.
possession
There is no "to have" verb in Finnish to show possession, but a construction with the adessive case plus the sg. 3rd person form of the verb olla, to be, is used for that. This is a special case of an existential clause.
Passit ovat minulla : the topic is the passports, the comment is that they are by or on me; "The passports are with me", "I have the passports"
Minulla on passit. : the topic is what is by or on me, the comment is the passports; "I have passports"
adverbs
The principle of topic and comment even extends to other parts of a clause.
- Sinä laulat usein. : the main topic is you, the secondary topic is the singing and the comment is the frequency of that action; "You sing often"
Sinä usein laulat. : the main topic is you, the secondary topic is the frequency and the comment is the singing; (lit.) "It is singing you do often
Note, in many cases the difference with adverbs is subtle and not even observed by all speakers.
In other cases the placement of an adverb can significantly alter the meaning.
Myös minä olen ujo : It has been established that some other person is shy and now I reveal that I am shy too.
Minä olen my\u00f6s ujo : It has come up that I have a certain other character trait and now I reveal that I am also shy.
Olen ujo myös : Since there is no following word to myös, it is unclear which one of the two interpretations above is the correct one. Should this be a part of a bigger sentence, the rest of the sentence could guide us, but without a clear context, this order is usually avoided.
in general
Suppose we have the words: punainen, talo, seisoo, mäellä. From these you can construct besides the neutral sentence- Punainen talo seisoo mäellä. : The red house stands on a hill.
also all the following ones
- Punainen talo mäellä seisoo.
- Seisoo punainen talo mäellä.
- Seisoo mäelä punainen talo.
- Mäellä punainen talo seisoo.
- Mäellä seisoo punainen talo.
I am not going to translate those into English, but you should have an idea what is the topic and what is the comment in all those. You can try to express the idea in each of them in your native language.
Final note, less in everyday use, but in (old-style) poetry you can swap the order of an adjective attribute and the noun, i.e. punainen talo --> talo punainen, that gives you another six possible sentences, so all in all from those four words you can create a dozen grammatically correct sentences - with different meanings and emphasis.