Pelkäävistä

Pelkäävistä is the elative plural form of the present active participle pelkäävä, which comes from the verb pelätä meaning “to fear.” In Finnish, the present active participle functions as an adjective-like descriptor and can appear in non-finite clauses or as part of a noun phrase. The form pelkäävistä marks the head noun in the elative plural, typically indicating “from the fearful [ones]/from among the fearful [ones]” or “of the fearful [ones]” depending on the syntactic construction.

Morphology and usage. The base form pelkäävä describes someone or something that is fear-ing or fearful. To form pelkäävistä, the stem pelkääv- takes the elative plural ending -istä. This allows the participle to agree with a head noun in elative plural, producing phrases such as pelkäävistä ihmisistä or pelkäävistä lapsista, where the entire noun phrase is in the elative case. In practice, pelkäävistä is used in descriptive or analytic writing to specify a subset within a larger group (for example, “the fearful people” or “those who fear”) and can appear in relative clauses or noun phrases.

Related forms. Finnish participles show a range of forms for different cases and numbers. The present active participle in singular nominative is pelkäävä (the fearful one). Other related forms include pelkäävät (present tense, they fear) and pelkäävän (genitive singular). The choice of form depends on the grammatical role of the modifier and the case of the head noun.

See also. Finnish grammar, present active participles, elative case.