Virtaavaan

Virtaavaan is a Finnish grammatical form derived from the adjective virtaava, meaning flowing or moving. It is the illative singular form used when an adjective modifies a noun in the illative case, often in phrases describing movement toward or into something that is flowing.

In practice, virtaavaan appears in sentences such as virtaavaan veteen, meaning into the flowing water. Here the noun vesi is in the illative form vetteseen or veteen, and the adjective virtaava takes the corresponding illative ending to agree with the noun. The phrase kan also be found in other illative constructions, such as virtaavaan virtaan (into the flowing current), depending on the noun being described.

Usage notes: virtaavaan is not a separate lexical entry; it is a inflected form of virtaava used to match the case of the noun it describes. The basic, non-inflected form is virtaava, which can pair with nouns in nominative to yield phrases like virtaava vesi (flowing water) or virtaava joki (flowing river). Finnish adjectives closely reflect the case and number of the nouns they modify, so forms like virtaavaan illustrate how adjectives adapt to illative contexts.

See also: virtaava, virta, illative case, Finnish grammar.