tehtävänsä

tehtäväänsä is a Finnish word formed by the noun tehtävä (“task, duty”) combined with the illative case ending ‑än and the third‑person possessive suffix ‑sä. The resulting form literally means “into his/her/its task” or “into one’s task”, and it is used when describing movement or direction toward a task that belongs to the subject of the sentence.

Morphologically the word can be broken down as follows: tehtävä (base noun) + ‑än (illative singular, indicating “into”) + ‑sä (possessive suffix for third‑person singular). The illative case is one of the Finnish locative cases and is typically expressed with an ‑n, ‑hVn or ‑VhVn ending, depending on vowel harmony; in this instance the form ‑än is used because the stem ends in a vowel. The possessive suffix ‑sä attaches after the case ending, making the whole construction agree with the subject without needing a separate possessive pronoun.

In sentences, tehtäväänsä functions as an adverbial complement. For example: Hän uppoutui tehtäväänsä, which translates to “He/she immersed himself/herself in his/her task.” The word conveys both the idea of directionality (toward) and ownership (one’s own).

The form exemplifies Finnish’s agglutinative nature, where multiple grammatical meanings are packed into a single word through suffixation. It also illustrates the interaction between case endings and possessive suffixes, a feature that can be challenging for learners because the order of suffixes is fixed: case ending first, then possessive suffix. Understanding words like tehtäväänsä helps reveal how Finnish encodes nuanced relationships between actions, locations, and participants within a compact morphological structure.