kasvaessaan

Kasvaessaan is a Finnish adverbial participle form derived from the verb kasvaa (to grow). It is used to indicate that an action or state in the main clause occurs at the same time as the subject’s growth or development, typically translating to “while growing” or “as [someone] grew up.” The form generally refers to the subject of the main clause.

Morphology and usage: The participle is formed from the verb’s stem with the suffix -essaan, which marks the third-person singular subject of the main clause. There are corresponding forms for other persons, for example kasvaessani (I, as I was growing up), kasvaessasi (you, as you were growing up), kasvaessanne (you all, as you all were growing up). Kasvaessaan is most common in literary or formal prose and in narratives; in everyday speech Finns often express the idea with a subordinate clause or a different construction. The form can be used with various verbs to express concurrent action during growth or development.

Examples and nuances: Kasvaessaan hän oppi lukemaan ja kirjoittamaan. (As he grew up, he learned to read and write.) Kasvaessaan hän muisti lapsuuden ystävänsä. (While he was growing up, he remembered his childhood friends.) While it conveys a clear temporal relationship, kasvaessaan tends to appear in literary or descriptive contexts rather than in casual conversation, where simpler sentence structures are more common.