kehityssanoilla

Kehityssanoilla is a Finnish term used in linguistic and educational contexts to refer to words and expressions that signal development, progression, or change within a discourse. The compound derives from kehitys “development” and sana “word,” and the plural form is used when discussing a set or category of such words. The term is not universally standardized but appears in discussions on discourse markers, genre analysis, and language education to describe vocabulary that helps structure information along a timeline or process.

In function, kehityssanoilla act as semantic markers that guide readers through stages, indicate temporal relations, or frame cause–effect sequences. They include nouns such as kehitys, muutos, and kasvu; verbs like kehittyä and muuttua; and participial or adjectival forms that express progression or improvement. They are common in research reporting, project documentation, and pedagogy to emphasize development rather than explicit evaluation.

In use, writers deploy kehityssanoilla to enhance coherence by signaling transitions between phases (initial, subsequent, final) and to foreground development in a subject area, program, or phenomenon. The precise inventory of kehityssanoilla may vary by domain and author, and in corpus work they are studied as a category of discourse markers or discourse-related vocabulary.

See also: kehityssana, kehityssanasto, discourse markers, Finnish vocabulary for development.