taivutettavin

Taivutettavin is a Finnish linguistic term meaning “the most inflectable.” It is the superlative form of taivutettava, an adjective that describes something that can be inflected. The construction combines the root taivutettava with the superlative suffix -in, yielding taivuttettavin. In practice, taivuttettavin is used mainly in linguistic descriptions and language-typology discussions to compare the inflectional versatility of words or word classes.

Usage and scope

The term is largely theoretical and not a common everyday label. It serves to discuss how readily a word or set of words can take inflectional endings across case, number, possessive forms, and other grammatical categories in a given language. Because inflectional systems vary between languages, taivuttettavin is typically employed in analyses that contrast highly inflecting items with less inflecting ones. It is most relevant in descriptive grammar, morphology studies, and discussions of inflectional productivity.

Relation to related concepts

Taivutettavin is related to taivuttava (inflectable) and taivutus (inflection). The broader concept behind taivuttettavin is inflectional versatility or productivity—the extent to which a form can generate morphologically distinct endings. The term highlights that inflectional potential is not uniform across lexemes or grammatical categories and can be a subject of cross-linguistic comparison.

See also

taivutettavuus, inflection, morphology, Finnish grammar, language typology.