Kuolevansa

Kuolevansa is a Finnish linguistic form derived from the verb kuolla, meaning to die. It is best described as a nominalized present-active participle combined with a third-person possessive suffix, producing a noun-like expression that can be translated as “the dying of [someone]” or “his/her dying.” The form is not common in everyday Finnish and is typically found in literary, historical, or religious texts where there is emphasis on the act or state associated with dying. Because it is relatively rare, kuolevansa is often discussed in discussions of archaic or stylistic Finnish rather than in standard modern usage.

Morphology and usage: The base participle kuoleva carries the sense of dying. By attaching the possessive suffix -nsa (or -nsä), the expression becomes a possessive noun phrase indicating the person connected to the act. In practice, kuolevansa behaves like a noun phrase and is used to foreground the act of dying as something attributable to a particular person. Its use tends to be poetic or formal, and it may appear in older texts or in translations that aim for an elevated register.

Relation to related forms: Kuolevansa is related to the verb kuolla and to the participle kuoleva, as well as to the noun kuolema (death). In contemporary Finnish, more common constructions to convey similar meanings would be to use kuolemansa (his death) or rephrase with a clause such as “kun hän kuoli” (when he died), depending on the context.

See also: Finnish grammar, participles and nominalization, possessive suffixes.