Henkilöllään

Henkilöllään is a Finnish inflected form derived from the noun henkilö (person). It combines the adessive suffix -llä, which marks location, meaning, or accompaniment (on/at/with), with the third-person possessive suffix -nsä/-sä, yielding the form henkilöllään. The result is a construction in which the action or state is tied to the person themselves rather than to someone else or to a thing associated with the person.

In usage, henkilöllään tends to appear in more formal, descriptive, or legal registers where a distinction is made that something concerns or is performed by the person themselves. It emphasizes personal involvement or agency. Because of its specific function, the form is less common in everyday spoken Finnish, where other expressions such as henkilönä (as a person) or personally (henkilökohtaisesti) may be preferred.

Morphologically, the pattern is part of a broader Finnish construction in which a noun inflected with -llä can take a third-person possessive suffix to indicate ownership or association, producing forms like kotonaan (at their home) or kouluillaan (at their school). These examples illustrate how the adessive plus possessive suffixes combine to express locality or agency tied to the subject.

See also: Finnish grammar on nouns, the adessive case, possessive suffixes, and constructions expressing personal involvement.