Deskriptiivisistä

Deskriptiivisistä is a Finnish adjective form meaning “from/relating to descriptive (things)” and is the plural form used with nouns in various cases. It stems from the adjective deskriptivinen (descriptive), which itself is a loanword adapted to Finnish from English or French through historical linguistic contact. In Finnish, descriptive terms are widely used across disciplines to denote approaches or data that describe phenomena as they are, rather than prescribing rules or norms.

In academic writing, deskriptiivinen describes methods, analyses, or sources that aim to present an accurate picture of reality without normative judgments. Common phrases include deskriptiviset tilastot (descriptive statistics), deskriptiviset lähestymistavat (descriptive approaches), or deskriptivisistä lähteistä (from descriptive sources). The form deskriptiivisistä is the appropriate inflected form when the adjective modifies a plural noun in a case such as elative or other plural cases, depending on the sentence structure.

Deskriptivistinen versus preskriptivinen is a frequent contrast in linguistics and related fields. Deskriptivinen/deskriptivinen lähestymistapa aims to describe language use as it occurs, whereas preskriptivinen (normatiivinen) lähestymistapa preskriptoi miten asioiden tulisi olla. This distinction helps frame research aims, from grammar descriptions to normative prescriptions in education and policy.

Deskriptivisistä is therefore a standard Finnish inflection used to discuss descriptive approaches, data, and sources across fields such as linguistics, statistics, sociology, and anthropology.