Emotive Causative Verbs -TTAA or -TUTTAA
This article deals with the derivation of emotive causative verbs aka feeling verbs. These are verbs that cause someone to feel a certain way: they cause emotions.
- Transitivity and intransitivity
- Emotive causative -utta/yttä- verbs
- Emotive causative noun-based verbs
This article’s intention is to shed light on how these words are formed. If you want to learn how to use them and what they mean, you should check out our article on feeling verbs.
Emotive causative verbs usually have the markers –tta-/-ttä-, -utta-/-yttä– or –tutta-/-tyttä-.
1. Transitivity and intransitivity
Feeling verbs are interesting because they don’t fit super neatly into the transitive vs intransitive verb division. In short, a transitive verb will get an object (e.g. avaan oven), while an intransitive verb will not (e.g. ovi avautuu).
Generally, sentences with these feeling verbs will include the person experiencing the feeling or emotion in the partitive case (e.g. Minua ärsyttää). In addition, it’s often possible to also add the thing that’s causing the feeling to the sentence as well (Minua ärsyttää moni asia). However, there isn’t always a clear cause for the emotion.
Linguists have squabbled over which function these two parts of the sentence fulfill: which one is the object and which one the subject.
2. Emotive causative verb-based verbs
The first group of clearly identifiable feeling verbs are based on another verb.
- For stem verbs that end in -aa/-ää, the final vowels will be replaced completely with the marker -utta/yttä- (e.g. aivast-aa → aivast-uttaa).
- For stem verbs that end in -ua/-yä, the stem verb’s -u- and the marker’s -u- will blend (e.g. huolestu-a → huolest-u-ttaa).
| Stem Verb | English | Causative | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| aivastaa | to sneeze | aivastuttaa | to feel like sneezing |
| hengästyä | to get winded | hengästyttää | to feel winded |
| hermostua | to get nervous | hermostuttaa | to feel nervous |
| huolestua | to become anxious | huolestuttaa | to feel anxious |
| hämmästyä | to become surprised | hämmästyttää | to feel surprised |
| ilahtua | to get happy | ilahduttaa | to feel delighted |
| katua | to regret | kaduttaa | to feel regret |
| kauhistua | to become terrified | kauhistuttaa | to feel terrified |
| kyllästyä | to get bored | kyllästyttää | to feel bored |
| nukkua | to sleep | nukuttaa | to feel like falling asleep |
| pyörtyä | to faint | pyörryttää | to feel faint |
| raivostua | to fly into a rage | raivostuttaa | to feel infuriated |
| suuttua | to get angry | suututtaa | to feel angry |
| tyrmistyä | to become shocked | tyrmistyttää | to feel shocked |
| väsyä | to become tired | väsyttää | to feel tired |
| ärtyä | to get annoyed | ärsyttää | to feel annoyed |
3. Emotive causative noun-based verbs
There is also a fairly large from of feeling verbs that are based on a noun rather than a verb. The marker -ttaa/-ttää is added to the weak stem of the noun.
| Noun | English | Verb | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| harmi | nuisance | harmittaa | to feel vexed |
| heikko | weak | heikottaa | to feel weak |
| helppo | easy | helpottaa | to ease up |
| hirveä | terrible | hirvittää | to feel terrified |
| huvi | amusement | huvittaa | to feel amused |
| jano | thirst | janottaa | to feel thirsty |
| kakka | poop | kakattaa | to feel like pooping |
| kiukku | anger | kiukuttaa | to feel angry |
| kuuma | hot | kuumottaa | to feel hot |
| nolo | embarrassment | nolottaa | to feel embarrassed |
| pelko | fear | pelottaa | to feel scared |
| pissa | pee | pissattaa | to feel like peeing |
| surkea | sad, wretched | surettaa | to feel sad |
| sääli | pity | säälittää | to feel pity |
| ujo | shy | ujostuttaa | to feel shy |
| vilu | cold | viluttaa | to feel cold |
| vittu | fuck | vituttaa | to feel pissed off |
That’s it for the general formation of feeling verbs. This article doesn’t include any of the numerous verbs that have been formed exceptionally.
Reading through the feeling verbs, it seems like Finns have a lot of words for being angry: kiukutta, suututtaa, raivostuttaa
But then I realize how many are in English…
Feel anger, ire, wrath, rage, fury (infuriate), mad (madden)
aggravated (not really anger in English, it’s sort of like gradually make more annoyed or angry or other negative arousal)
inhotta – to feel dislike
kiukutta – to feel aggravated/testy
suututtaa – to feel angry
raivostuttaa – to feel rage/to infuriate (more than suututtaa, related to raivota – to rage)
It’s always hard to pick which one(s) to kind of just use as a baseline, and then as I learn more Finnish to substitute others as I learn their connotations.