Sisältävälle

Sisältävälle is the allative singular form of the Finnish present active participle sisältävä, which comes from the verb sisältää meaning “to contain.” As a participle used as an adjective, sisälätävä describes something that contains another thing, and the allative ending -lle marks the target or recipient of an action in a sentence. In practice, sisältävä is commonly used to form phrases that describe objects as containing something, with the head noun placed in the nominative or another case as appropriate, and the whole phrase can be declined to match case and number.

In usage, tietoja sisältävä is a typical attributive construction meaning “information-containing.” For example, tietoja sisältävä asiakirja means “an information-containing document.” When the noun is in the allative case to indicate ‘to/for’ that object, the participle phrase can be combined with the allative noun, as in tietoja sisältävälle asiakirjalle meaning “to the information-containing document.” The construction is common in technical, administrative, and labeling language where it is important to indicate that something includes specific data or contents.

Etymologically, sisälvä from sisältää plus the suffix -vä creates a present participle meaning “containing.” The word is a descriptive, non-verbal form used in noun phrases to convey the presence of contents without naming the contents explicitly every time.

See also: Finnish participles, adjective usage, case inflection in Finnish.