vähäisemmillä

vähäisemmillä is a form of the Finnish comparative adjective vähemmä, meaning "less" or "fewer." The word itself is a dative plural form, used to describe more than one entity in a state of lesser quantity or degree. The stem is vapaka: vähemmä → vähäisempi → vähäisemmillä. Like other Finnish adjectives, it inflects for case, number, and degree; the dative plural ending –lilla indicates that the adjective modifies a noun plural in the dative case.

In sentence construction, vähäisemmillä is typically used after a preposition or after a verb that takes a dative complement. Common contexts include expressions such as “tämän budjetin rajoituksiin vastaavilla ehdoksoilla vähäisemmillä sijoituksilla” (“with less investment in this budget’s constraints”) or “hänellä on vähäisemmillä taloudellisilla resursseilla” (“he has fewer financial resources”). The form is rarely used in everyday speech, but appears in formal reports, economic analyses, and literary texts that emphasize comparative scarcity.

Notable examples of its use appear in the Finnish National Development Plan documents of the 1990s, where the agenda described “vähäisemmillä velkaantumisasteilla” (“with lower debt levels”); and in the novel *Kultainen synkkä aamu* by Jaakko Turtiainen, where a character remarks on “vähäisemmillä resurssit” in the context of a struggling village. The phrase exemplifies the precise grammatical agreement that Finnish requires between adjectives, nouns, and their grammatical roles.

Overall, vähäisemmillä is a specialized form useful for precise comparative statements about multiples in contexts where less quantity or intensity is noted. Its usage is governed by the rules of Finnish adjective inflection and its role as a dative plural.