Selittävien

Selittävien is a Finnish grammatical form of the adjective or present active participle selittävä, meaning explana tory or explaining. It is the genitive plural form of selittävä and is used to modify a noun that is in genitive plural. In practice, selittävien describes things that are explanatory in relation to something else, and it appears in phrases where ownership or association is expressed through the genitive case.

Morphology and usage

Selittävien is formed from the stem selittävä with the genitive plural ending -en. It typically accompanies nouns in genitive plural, for example in noun phrases such as selittävien lausuntojen or selittävien tekijöiden. In these cases, the phrase translates roughly as “of the explanatory statements” and “of the explanatory factors,” respectively. The form is mainly found in formal or technical Finnish, especially in academic, legal, or analytical writing, where precise specification of what is being described is important.

Examples

- tutkijat referoivat selittävien lausuntojen vaikutusta päätöksentekoon, meaning “the researchers refer to the effect of the explanatory statements on decision-making.”

- tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan selittävi en tekijöiden roolia, meaning “the role of the explanatory factors in the study.” Note that selittäviä would be used if the noun were in partitive (e.g., selittäviä tekijöitä).

Related forms

Selittävä (explanatory) is the base form; selittäviä is its partitive plural, while selittävien is the genitive plural. The term itself is not a separate concept but a grammatical inflection used to describe explanatory elements in relation to other nouns.

See also: selittävä, selittäjä, selittäminen.