Rinnastettava

Rinnastettava is a linguistic term used in Finnish syntax to describe an element that can participate in coordination (rinnastus). The word is formed from the verb rinnastaa, meaning to coordinate or juxtapose, and the suffix -ettava, which creates an adjective meaning “coordinatable” or “to be coordinated.” It is primarily used in descriptive grammar and language teaching to distinguish units that can be joined in a coordinated sequence from those that cannot without changing structure.

In practice, a rinnastettava unit can be a word, a phrase, or, depending on the theoretical framework, a clause, provided it belongs to a syntactic category that allows coordination, such as noun phrases, verb phrases, or adjective phrases. When analyzing a sentence, researchers may label the parts that can be connected by coordinating conjunctions—most commonly ja, sekä, tai—as rinnastettavat.

Examples: In the noun phrase “kissa ja koira,” the nouns “kissa” and “koira” are rinnastettavat. In the sentence “hän tuli, näki ja lähti,” the verbs form a chain of rinnastettavia units linked by “ja.” The concept also appears in cross-linguistic studies of coordination phenomena.

Notes: The term is mainly a descriptive tool in grammar, and its precise scope can vary between grammars and teaching traditions. Some frameworks use alternative terminology for coordination and may not explicitly mark every possible rinnastettava unit.

See also: Rinnastus; Rinnastaminen; Finnish grammar.