grammar help

[garoowood]

Vain emännän käytössä ollut auto, joka tuotu muuttoautona Saksasta.

Help me with "käytössä ollut" pls.

It seems it come from käyttö--use and it is in inessive form? emännän käytössä ollut suppose to act as a premodifier. I have no idea how to use this one.

I would say emännän käyttämä auto.

[Jukka Aho]

Vain emännän käytössä ollut auto, joka tuotu muuttoautona Saksasta.

Help me with "käytössä ollut" pls.

It seems it come from käyttö--use and it is in inessive form? emännän käytössä ollut suppose to act as a premodifier. I have no idea how to use this one.

My “grammatical interpretation” of that is that ollut is the active past participle and käytössä is just a modifier.

Normal active sentence in present tense:

    Auto on emännän käytössä.
    “The car is [generally] used by the-lady-of-the-house.”
    “The car is available for use by the-lady-of-the-house; at her disposal.”

The car is typically used by her or even primarily reserved for her use. It is generally at her disposal and she is the one who usually drives it.

The perfect tense:

    Myyn auton pois. Se on ollut vain emännän käytössä.
    “I will sell the car away. It has only been [generally] used/driven by the-lady-of-the-house.”

It has been at her disposal and she has been the only one who has generally used it.

The corresponding active past participle:

     emännän käytössä ollut auto

I would say emännän käyttämä auto.

“(Jonkun) käytössä oleva/ollut X” expresses long-term, “committed” usage where the “thing X” has been designated as yours-to-use and where it is or has been at your disposal and subject to your whims.

“(Jonkun) käyttämä X” may more easily refer to “uncommitted” one-shot single use. Even when it doesn’t, it does not imply any ownership or ongoing control over the usage. For example, you could “use a bus line” this way: emännän käyttämä bussivuoro.

But you can’t say emännän käytössä ollut bussivuoro unless you’re a filthy rich family who can buy bus lines for their personal use, keeping them at their disposal and using them at will.

[garoowood]

Auto on emännän käytössä.

Is it interpreted as: The car is in use of wife. ?

It seems it is not a passive voice but it express that kind of meaning. Like the English "under the use of mine"?

I read about the active past participle, but "käytössä ollut--has been in use?" looks unfamiliar to me. "käyttänyt--used" is what I can think of.

Anyway, I don't know any other means to express something is used, made, throwed etc. by somebody in Finnish except agent participle. So maybe I missed something about the usage of nouns in inessive case(I only know menossa--going, tulossa--coming)?

[Jukka Aho]

Auto on emännän käytössä.

Is it interpreted as: The car is in use of wife. ?

Or rather “...in use by the wife”, “used by the wife”? That’s one sense of it, yes. There are at least two slightly different senses in which this example of yours could be interpreted:

1. “The car is in use by(/of?) the wife.” (Currently or typically/habitually used by her, assigned to her use or designated [primarily] for her use.)
2. “The car is at the disposal of the wife.” (Available for her use: she is allowed to freely use the car as she pleases, at least for the time being. Better expressed as käytettävissä, but käytössä is commonly used in this sense as well.)

But I think those senses were already covered in my previous post so if you’re seeking some further clarification beyond the senses described above, I’m not sure what that might be.

It seems it is not a passive voice but it express that kind of meaning. Like the English "under the use of mine"?

Google finds only a single hit with that exact phrase (paraphrased as it appears above) so I can’t really compare the usage.

I read about the active past participle, but "käytössä ollut--has been in use?" looks unfamiliar to me.

The point I was trying to make in my previous post was that the word ollut (-lut/-lyt) is, in and of itself, the active past participle. The word käytössä is not the active past participle (as such) but a modifier for the verb olla. The examples I gave in the previous post – on the active present tense and the active perfect tense – were meant to clarify that you can connect käytössä to the verb olla just the same way in those forms as well and the basic meaning doesn’t change. In other words, whether the verb olla is used in its active past participle form – as in your original example – or in finite, personal active forms does not matter: you can still tack käytössä onto it, as an adverb, and the possessive word, and it creates the above-described meaning.

The expression olla jonkun käytössä is probably best described as verbiliitto (see here and here – I’m not sure what linguists would call this in English) or a rektio (case form governance directed by a verb), or a combination of both. (Compare to English phrasal verbs.) Or maybe you could simply shrug it off as an idiom.

Anyway, I don't know any other means to express something is used, made, throwed etc. by somebody in Finnish except agent participle. So maybe I missed something about the usage of nouns in inessive case(I only know menossa--going, tulossa--coming)?

I think this is a one-off thing, just like the English phrasal verbs and their meanings, so if you’re looking for a grammatical pattern with a family of similarly-formed expressions (or a generic rule about forming them) you might not find one.

[Rob A.]

.....

The expression olla jonkun käytössä is probably best described as verbiliitto (see here and here – I’m not sure what linguists would call this in English) or a rektio (case form governance directed by a verb), or a combination of both. (Compare to English phrasal verbs.) Or maybe you could simply shrug it off as an idiom.

This sounds pretty good.... I suppose the main point being that the meaning of the verb changes with the addition of the extra word(s), rather merely being modified.... I looked closely at the first two examples in your link:

"I ran into my teacher at the movies last night." run + into = meet
"He ran away when he was 15." run + away = leave home

The first example seems clear enough....the second example made me think a bit, ... "away", at first, simply seems to be an adverb, but, I suppose, in context, it can fit the definition given of a phrasal verb:

A phrasal verb is a verb plus a preposition or adverb which creates a meaning different from the original verb.

And, as you say, the easy way out is to just call it an "idiom"....