Astioissaan

Astioissaan is a Finnish grammatical form meaning "in his/her/its dishes." It is not a standalone concept but a productive construction formed from the noun astia (dishware) in its plural form astiat, plus the inessive case ending -ssa/-ssä to indicate location, and the third-person possessive suffix -nsa/-nsä. The result, astioissaan, conveys both the location of something and ownership of the dishes, translating roughly to "in their dishes" or "in his/her/its dishes."

Usage: The form is used in everyday Finnish to describe objects or contents that are inside or associated with someone’s dishes. It commonly appears in descriptive sentences and narratives to evoke domestic settings. Example: Astioissaan oli likaa. (There was dirt in his/her dishes.)

Linguistic notes: Astioissaan illustrates how Finnish encodes spatial and possessive information through suffixal morphology. Similar constructions can be formed with other nouns by applying the inessive suffix and the appropriate possessive ending. It is a standard grammatical pattern rather than a named concept.

See also: Finnish grammar, inessive case, possessive suffixes.