puhuttavan

Puhuttavan is a Finnish grammatical form used to describe something that is to be spoken to or addressed. It is the genitive singular of a participial adjective often used in noun phrases to indicate the addressee or the entity that will receive speech.

In Finnish, participles can function as adjectives and can take typical case endings. Therefore, puhuttavan appears in phrases where the referent is the person or thing that will be addressed. For example, in a construction such as the name of the person to be addressed, one might encounter puhuttavan henkilön nimi. The form also inflects for other cases, so genitive is puhuttavan, partitive is puhuttavaa, and so on, depending on the syntactic role.

Usage and meaning can vary with context. Puhuttavan commonly occurs in formal, instructional, or narrative language where it is important to specify who is to be spoken to, such as in legal texts, educational materials, or dialogue descriptions. The broader function is to link a noun to its future communicative relationship with the addressee.

Etymology and related forms: puhuttavan derives from a participial adjective related to speaking or addressing, and is part of Finnish participle inflection. The exact root verb may differ by construction, but the grammatical role remains consistent: it marks the genitive singular of the to-be-addressed referent within a noun phrase.

See also: Finnish participles, Finnish grammar, address forms in Finnish.