Pienentäviä

Pienentäviä is the present active participle form of the Finnish verb pienentää, meaning to reduce or decrease. In this form, pienentäviä functions as an adjective or adjectival phrase, describing agents, effects, or factors that cause reduction. The form is the plural partitive of the participle, and it typically appears before a noun in partitive or other cases where the noun is expressed as an object or partial quantity.

Morphology and usage:

The base participle is pienentävä (reducing). In plural, it becomes pienentäviä when used with a noun in partitive plural, for example: pienentäviä vaikutuksia (reducing effects) or pienentäviä tekijöitä (reducing factors). The corresponding nominative plural would be pienentävät tekijät, while the singular form is pienentävä tekijä. This pattern follows Finnish participle adjectives: the -va/-vä form in the singular becomes -viä/-viä in the partitive plural.

Semantics:

Pienentäviä denotes something that reduces size, amount, intensity, or other measures. It can describe physical reduction (pienentävät mittasuhteita) or more abstract diminution, such as risk or cost, depending on context. In scientific or technical writing, more specific terms may be used to avoid ambiguity, but pienentäviä remains common in general-language and descriptive uses.

See also:

Other present active participles formed from common verbs can have similar plural partitive forms, enabling flexible adjectival usage in Finnish. The related term pelkistäviä is used specifically for chemical reducing agents, illustrating domain-specific vocabulary distinctions.