käytönaikaisessa

Käytönaikaisessa is a Finnish term used primarily in academic discussions of language use. It is the inessive singular form of the adjective käytönaikainen, which roughly corresponds to “usage-based” or “related to the time of use” in English. The base word käyttö means use or application, and the suffix -aikainen yields a temporal or contextual nuance, so käytönaikainen can describe phenomena tied to actual usage patterns.

In practice, käytönaikaisessa is used to frame analyses, descriptions, or phenomena that are understood within the context of how language is used by speakers. It is common in fields such as sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and functional linguistics, where researchers emphasize empirical usage data over prescriptive norms. As an inflected form, its exact nuance depends on the accompanying noun; examples include phrases like “käytönaikaisessa kontekstissa” (in a usage-based context) or “käytönaikaisessa tarkastelussa” (in a usage-based examination).

The term is not universally fixed across Finnish linguistics, and some authors may opt for alternatives such as “käytön perusteella” or “käytön aikainen” to convey similar ideas. When translating, the closest established equivalent is typically “usage-based,” though the surrounding context may require a more specific Finnish rendering.

See also: usage-based linguistics; sociolinguistics; corpus linguistics; language change; Finnish linguistics.