Lyhentäneet

Lyhentäneet is a Finnish word formed as the past active participle of the verb lyhentää, meaning to shorten or to abbreviate. The form lyhentäneet corresponds to the third-person plural perfect aspect and is used with the auxiliary olla to express a completed action, as in Ne ovat lyhentäneet artikkelin, “They have shortened the article.”

As a participle, lyhentäneet can function attributively to describe something that has been shortened, and it may appear in non-finite clauses as part of a compound predicate. In many contexts, however, the passive form lyhennetty is used to indicate that something has been shortened without specifying the agent responsible for the action. The choice between lyhentäneet and lyhennetty reflects whether the emphasis is on the agents who performed the shortening or on the result of the shortening itself.

Morphology and usage notes: the root is lyhente-, the active participle suffix is -äne-, and the plural marker for this participle form is -et. In finite phrases, it is commonly combined with a forms of olla (on, ovat) to convey perfect aspect, yielding phrases like ovat lyhentäneet. As a grammatical tool, lyhentäneet is most frequent in written Finnish, including descriptive, journalistic, and linguistic contexts, where the action is attributed to a subject plural.

Relation to related forms: lyhentää is the verb meaning “to shorten,” lyhennys refers to shortening or abbreviation as a noun, and lyhentynyt is the corresponding passive participle meaning “shortened.” The terminology is part of Finnish participle morphology and is used to discuss editing, summarizing, or condensation processes.