liittojensa

Liittojensa is a Finnish possessive determiner used to refer to something belonging to a group of unions or federations. The base word liitto means a federation or association. When the possessor is third-person plural (they), the form liittojensa is used to indicate “their federations” or “of their federations.” It commonly appears before a following noun to form a compound noun phrase, for example: liittojensa johtajat (the leaders of their federations) and liittojensa päätökset (the decisions of their federations).

Morphology and usage: The construction signals that the possessor is a group of organizations rather than a single person. It is typical in formal or analytic writing, such as political science, labor history, or comparative studies of unions. The phrase can be declined with other cases when the following noun is declined, for instance liittojensa johtajien kokous (the meeting of the leaders of their federations) or liittojensa jäseniä (members of their federations).

Examples: Liittojensa johtajat päättivät uuden aiesuunnitelman hyväksymisestä. Liittojensa jäsenet kokoontuivat keskustelemaan tulevista tavoitteista. In these examples, liittojensa clearly marks possession by the plural subject “their federations.”

See also: Finnish grammar, possessive suffixes, genitive case.