Ylläpitämäänsä

Ylläpitämäänsä is a Finnish non-finite attributive form derived from the verb ylläpitää, meaning to maintain or uphold. It is built from the ma-infinitive ylläpitämään (to maintain) combined with the third-person possessive suffix -sä, yielding a participial phrase that can be translated roughly as “that he maintains” or “the maintenance by him.” The form functions inside a noun phrase as a post-nominal modifier, analogous to a relative clause in other languages.

Morphology and function

The structure is a non-finite participial construction: the infinitive keeps its non-finite, purposive sense, while the possessive suffix indicates the possessor of the action. In practice, ylläpitämäänsä occurs before a noun in partitive or other case forms to specify the thing that is maintained by a particular subject. For example, the noun phrase tietoa, jonka hänen ylläpitämäänsä could be interpreted as “the information that he maintains,” with ylläpitämäänsä attaching to the possessive phrase and tietoa serving as the object of maintenance.

Usage

The form is mainly encountered in written Finnish, especially in formal, administrative, legal, or academic contexts where authors prefer compact, attribute-by-ownership constructions. It is less common in everyday spoken Finnish, where speakers typically use a finite relative clause (for example, jonka hän ylläpitää) or other simpler expressions. The ylläpitämäänsä construction allows speakers to express “the thing maintained by someone” in a concise, noun-adjacent pattern.

Related forms

Ylläpitämäänsä belongs to a family of participial expressions formed with the ma-infinitive plus possessive suffixes, used to indicate ownership of the action described by the non-finite form. It is distinct from finite relative clauses and from other participial forms such as ylläpitävänsä or ylläpitämäänsä with different syntactic placements or possessive targets.