Pitämässä

Pitämässä is a Finnish present active participle of the verb pitää, meaning “to hold,” “to keep,” or in many contexts “to give” (as in delivering a speech). The form is used to describe someone who is in the act of performing an action. It is built from the verb stem pit- with the present-participle suffix -ämä/-mässä and often appears together with the auxiliary olla to express ongoing action, roughly equivalent to the English “in the act of doing.”

In usage, pitämässä commonly describes actions such as delivering or holding something, for example when someone is in the middle of performing an activity. It is frequently found in written Finnish, including news reporting and descriptive prose, to convey a sense of immediacy about an event. The object of the action is typically in the partitive case (for example puhetta, esitelmää), reflecting Finnish object agreement patterns with the verb pitää.

Examples:

- Hän on pitämässä puhetta. (He is delivering a speech.)

- Hallitus on pitämässä tiedotustilaisuutta. (The government is holding a press briefing.)

Notes:

- Pitämässä is one of several participial forms of pitää and is used primarily in clauses describing ongoing actions. It is not a standalone finite verb form; it functions as a participle within compound tenses with olla or in adjectival phrases.

- Related forms include pitää (infinitive), pitää kiinni (to hold on), and pitävä (present active adjective).