puhuttavalta

Puhuttavalta is a Finnish linguistic term used to describe the elative form of the noun phrase puhuteltava, which denotes the person who is being addressed in discourse. The word arises in discussions of form of address (puhuttelu) and in discourse analysis, where Finnish grammar marks perspectival roles and interactional alignment between speakers and addressees.

Morphology and meaning: puhuttavalta is formed by taking the base noun phrase for “the addressee” and adding the elative suffix -lta (or -ltä). Consequently, puhuttavalta literally means “from the addressee” or “from the person being addressed,” depending on the syntactic and discourse context. In analyses, it is used to indicate a referent related to the addressee and to discuss how utterances are oriented toward that person within dialogue or reported speech.

Function and usage: The term is primarily found in academic and descriptive work on Finnish syntax and pragmatics rather than in everyday spoken Finnish. It helps describe how speakers position the addressee in conversation, how authority or politeness is encoded, and how information is attributed from the addressee’s point of view in analyses of dialogue. Because Finnish employs rich case marking and various forms of address, puhuttavalta serves as a tool for describing subtle interactional relations rather than as a common lexical item.

See also: puhuttelu, puhutteltava, puhutteleva.