Tavoittelevaan

Tavoittelevaan is a Finnish grammatical form that functions as the illative singular of the present active participle tavoitteleva, derived from the verb tavoitella, meaning “to pursue” or “to aim for.” The present active participle tavoitteleva occurs as an adjective meaning “pursuing” or “aspiring.” When the illative suffix -an is added, the result is tavoittelevaan, which marks direction toward a goal or target within noun phrases or clauses.

Morphology and usage

The form tavoittelevaan combines the participial stem tavoitteleva with the illative suffix -an, following Finnish vowel harmony rules. The illative case expresses movement toward or toward the figurative object of pursuit, such as a goal, aspiration, or objective, and is commonly found in more formal or written Finnish. As a result, tavoittelevaan tends to appear in contexts where the writer wants to specify the destination or aim of a pursuing activity.

Relation to related forms

Tavoitteleva is the base participle; other related forms include tavoitteleva (nominative), tavoittelevan (genitive), and tavoiteltavaa (partitive). The verb from which they derive is tavoitella, and the noun or noun phrase modified by tavoitteleva can be further inflected in its own case forms.

Notes

Because the illative form of participles is relatively specialized, tavoittelevaan is more common in formal, literary, or academic Finnish and less frequent in everyday speech. It demonstrates how Finnish uses participles as adjectives and how cases convey spatial or directional relationships even with abstract targets like goals or aspirations. See also Finnish grammar, illative case, participles, tavoitella.