Ilmaistavat

Ilmaistavat is a Finnish linguistic term that appears in some theoretical discussions to denote the parts of a proposition that are explicitly expressed. The word is built from the verb ilmaista, meaning “to express,” and a nominalizing or adjectival suffix pattern that yields a sense of “expressible” or “things to be expressed.” In practice, ilmaistavat is not a common everyday word; its use is characteristic of analytic writing on meaning, phrasing, and information structure, where researchers distinguish expressed content from what remains implicit or contextually implied.

In analyses where it is used, ilmaistavat refers to the content that a speaker chooses to state overtly in an utterance. The concept helps describe how much semantic load is carried by explicit phrasing versus inference, presupposition, or context. Depending on the author, ilmaistavat may be treated as a formal category within a theory or as a pragmatic label for the explicit propositions present in a sentence. The exact boundaries of ilmaistavat are not universally fixed and can vary between frameworks.

Examples, in English for illustration: in the sentence “Two cats slept on the mat,” the ilmaistavat would include the propositions that there were two cats and that those cats slept on the mat. Other aspects, such as motives or reasons, would be considered non-ilmaistavat unless explicitly stated. The interpretation of ilmaistavat is a point of discussion among linguists and remains open to methodological choice.

See also: ilmaisut, ilmaisu, ilmaiseminen, semantics, information structure.