päätteeltään

Päätteeltään is a Finnish linguistic term used to describe something that is determined by or analyzed from a word’s ending. It is an adverbial expression formed from the noun päätteet (endings, affixes) and the suffix -ltä/-ltään, which in Finnish grammar conveys a sense of “from/through” or “by means of.” In descriptions of morphology, päätteeltään signals that the relevant property (such as part of speech, number, or case) is inferred from the word’s ending rather than from its meaning alone.

In practice, päätteeltään is used in academic discussion and teaching to emphasize that classification rests on inflectional endings. For example, when examining Finnish nouns, adjectives, or verbs, one might note that a form is päätteeltään monikko (by its ending, it is plural) if the word ends with a plural marker such as -t. The term helps linguists distinguish conclusions drawn from form versus those derived from semantics or syntax.

The concept is closely related to broader linguistic ideas of morphology and taivutus (inflection). Related terms include pääte (suffix or ending), taivutus ("inflection"), and morfologia (morphology). While päätteeltään appears mainly in descriptive grammars and linguistic analyses, it occasionally appears in language-education texts to illustrate how endings influence grammatical classification.

In summary, päätteeltään designates an analysis or classification based on a word’s ending, highlighting the role of suffixes in Finnish grammar and morphology.