lauseessaan

Lauseessaan is a Finnish grammatical form meaning “in his/her/its sentence” or, depending on context, “in their sentence.” It is built from the noun lause (sentence or clause) combined with the inessive case ending -ssa (meaning “in”) and the third-person possessive suffix -nsa/-nsä, which marks ownership by a third person. The result describes a location within a sentence that belongs to someone, for example “lauseessaan” = “in his/her sentence.” The same noun can yield related forms such as lauseessa (in a sentence) or lauseensa (his/her/its sentence) without the inessive ending.

Morphology and usage

- Lause + -ssa = lauseessa (in a sentence)

- Lauseessa + -nsa/-nsä = lauseessaan (in his/her/its sentence)

Because possessive suffixes in Finnish attach to the word before the case ending, l a u s e e n s a a n d l a u s e e s s a n a re formed by adding both the possessive and the case ending to lause.

The form is most often encountered in analytic or descriptive contexts, such as linguistic examples, legal or literary commentary, or scholarly writing where one needs to refer to a sentence authored or uttered by a particular person.

Notes

- Lauseessaan should not be confused with lauseensa (his/her/its sentence) or lauseessa (in a sentence). The distinction lies in the presence of the possessive suffix and the inessive ending together.

- The interpretation of l a u s e e s s a n a depends on the discourse’s referent for the possessor.

Example: Lauseessaan hän esittää kolme syytä. (In his sentence, he presents three reasons.)