Talk:lapsi

Partitive singular

Could someone enlighten me why the 'p' disappears in the partitive singular form "lasta". I have never heard of this type of consonant gradation.

201.95.113.232 22:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Probable explanation as well as suggestion for anyone knowledgeable enough about Finnish philology

Finnish has been even less tolerant of difficult consonant clusters in earlier stages of its history, and at those points, *lapsta would not have been well tolerated, and elision of the p would be the strategy Finnish picks in similar situations. (See e.g.

Lapsi is a word with some peculiarities, though: I've been wondering whether there's any good formal explanation as to the difference in use between the two essives it has, lapsena and lasna - I would say lasna is more poetic and has more cutesy connotations, but I am not a 100% sure of this, given that I am not a native speaker.

80.222.232.189 11:12, 28 February 2012 (UTC)