puoli pari and monta

[matsnorberg]

Can someone judge the correctness of the following sentences?

1) Haluaisin puoli kuppia kahvia.
2) Haluaisin puolen kupin kahvia.
3) Ostan pari säkkiä perunaa.
4) Ostan pari säkkiä perunoita.
4) Nostan monta kiloa kiveä pöydälle.
5) En näe montaa lintua metsässä.
5b) En näe monta lintua metsässä.
6) En osta paria kiloa porkkanaa.
7) Nostan moni kiven pöydälle.
Nostan monen kiven pöydelle.
9) Nostan moni kiveä pöydälle.
10) Nostan monta kiveä pöydälle.

Mats

[007]

Tried to comment on the topic but it's just too daunting a task for me. Lots of confusions. Subscribing...

[Jukka Aho]

Can someone judge the correctness of the following sentences?

1) Haluaisin puoli kuppia kahvia.

OK.

2) Haluaisin puolen kupin kahvia.

Easily understandable but not correct.

(Would be correct if there were a specific, hypothetical, well-known, Harry Potter-esque product or service called puolen kupin kahvi, but that’s clutching at the grammatical straws.)

3) Ostan pari säkkiä perunaa.
4) Ostan pari säkkiä perunoita.

Both are fine. You can think of potatoes both in a countable and an uncountable manner.

4) Nostan monta kiloa kiveä pöydälle.

Not totally out of question but kiviä would sound more natural here. Probably because uncountability implies uniformity and stones can come in wildly warying sizes. Or, on the other hand, because in the contexts where kivi is used in an uncountable manner, it is more often taken to mean a volume or mass of solid rock than a pile of rocks: Metrotunnelin päällä on 30 metriä kiveä.

But of course, if uniform stones are sold by mass or volume, then you can call it 500 kiloa kiviä or 500 kiloa kiveä, depending on your viewpoint. The latter is perhaps what someone who deals stones for a living and only thinks of them by the way of their total mass would be more likely to say.

5) En näe montaa lintua metsässä.
5b) En näe monta lintua metsässä.

Monta used to be the recommended standard form for the longest time but the presprictive tides have now turned and montaa is accepted as well — and considered to convey additional information that mere monta doesn’t. See these articles:

• Pronominit: moni, monta, montaa (Kotimaisten kielten keskus — Kielitoimiston ohjepankki)
• Montaa-partitiivi (Kielikello)

6) En osta paria kiloa porkkanaa.

Correct.

7) Nostan moni kiven pöydälle.

Nope.

8) Nostan monen kiven pöydelle.

OK... sort of... if you have a previously-mentioned collection of stones of which you only lift some selected specimens on the table, maybe only one at a time, to examine it, or something. The sentence would need further details on what you’re doing with them to become fully acceptable, though. (Also: pöydälle.)

9) Nostan moni kiveä pöydälle.

Nope.

10) Nostan monta kiveä pöydälle.

Correct, and what you would normally say.

[matsnorberg]

Thanks!

I see that puoli and pari is very much like the numbers. I can write kaksi kuppia, kolme kuppia, puoli kuppia and pari kuppia. Also the ackusative and nominative coincides just as for the numbers, no n-termination in the object (puoli kuppia and not puolen kuppia). But whai if pari stands alone, do the sames rules still apply?

Näin pari pihalla.
or
Näin parin pihalla.

Mats

[Jukka Aho]

I see that puoli and pari is very much like the numbers. I can write kaksi kuppia, kolme kuppia, puoli kuppia and pari kuppia. Also the ackusative and nominative coincides just as for the numbers, no n-termination in the object (puoli kuppia and not puolen kuppia).

Just note that puolen kuppia, specifically, is also used as a colloquial short form of puolisen kuppia, i.e. “about half a cuppa”. From the Internet:

Koneen kanssa kävi pieni vahinko ja näppäimistön päälle kaatui puolen kuppia kahvia.
Join eilen puolen kuppia kahvia aamusta.

But you don’t use this in formal writing style.

But whai if pari stands alone, do the sames rules still apply?

Näin pari pihalla.

“I saw a couple [of them] out in the yard.” (referring to previously-discussed objects or creatures)

Näin parin pihalla.

“I saw the couple out in the yard.”
“I saw [my] pair out in the yard.” (Your dance partner, perhaps. Although you’d probably want to refer to her using a possessive form. But if it were obvious from the context, mere parin would do in informal speech.)

....not exactly the same interpretation for pari. Now it’s not so much about counting things and concluding there are (at least) two, maybe three of them, but concepts such as “a couple (of lovers)” or “a pair (of something)”, “(one’s) pair”, ...