Merkityksellisiä

Merkityksellisiä is the plural partitive form of the Finnish adjective merkityksellinen, meaning meaningful or significant. The base merkityksellinen is built from the noun merkitys (meaning or significance) plus the suffix -llinen, which conveys the sense of “having the quality of.” In Finnish, adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in number and case, so merkityksellisiä is used with plural nouns in the partitive case.

In practice, merkityksellisiä is employed to describe things that carry meaning, importance, or relevance within a given context. It can refer to practical significance, interpretive importance, or statistical meaning, depending on the subject matter. The term is common in academic, analytical, and journalistic writing, where researchers report that certain results, differences, or observations are merkityksellisiä (significant or meaningful).

Related expressions include merkityksellinen (singular) for a single item, merkityksetön (meaningless), and the noun merkittävyys or merkitys for the broader concept of significance or meaning. While merkitys focuses on meaning in a general sense, merkityksellisyys as a noun denotes the quality or state of being meaningful.

Examples: Tulokset ovat merkityksellisiä, indicating meaningful results; Onko tämä ero merkityksellinen? asking whether the difference is significant. Overall, merkityksellisiä functions as a key descriptor for significance in plural, partitive contexts.